Website Magazine- May 2010 by Philip Koene

Super-Awesome-Mega-Optimal >> The Guide to Links, p. 20

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WordPress Font Fun, p. 9

MARKETING CHAMPION: Craig C.

COMPANY: Online Travel Service EMAIL ACHIEVEMENT: Even though Craig’s company was seeing some steady growth, he knew he needed to find new and innovative ways to reach customers and entice prospects if he wanted to continue to drive healthy sales. Enter mobile marketing. Although Craig had never rolled out a mobile marketing campaign before, he knew that this approach was one of the best ways to reach people where they “live”. Knowing that most people are reading and downloading content on their mobile devices, Craig set forth a marketing campaign that played right into how people want to receive product news, or hear about promotions or upcoming events — on their mobile device. By adapting his marketing campaign to the ease and portability of handhelds and cell phones, Craig saw a 9% increase in sales. That’s the kind of mobility he likes to see. Think you’re ready to become a Marketing Champion? Visit Yesmail.com

It’s time to mobilize your marketing Does the idea of making your marketing emails “mobile-friendly” scare you so much you think it’d be easier to revert back to stone tablets and chisels? Don’t be afraid. Designing or adapting your campaigns for a mobile format isn’t that daunting at all — and the mere thought of it shouldn’t prevent marketers from traveling to the not-really-so-foreign world of mobile marketing campaigns. Mobile communications have become a key component of today’s marketing scene — don’t be left out. It’s time to enhance your email program to market to the ever-growing numbers of mobile users — introduce mobile messaging into your marketing mix by extending current promotions with mobile-only offers. Encourage mobile user interaction by emailing or broadcasting special offer access codes with a free download, or use mobile messages to drive people back to your website, generate brand awareness and promote your services all at the same time. Need a little help to get started? Yesmail has your back — our award winning Professional Services team is here to help. We can assess your current email program and identify opportunities to incorporate mobile marketing into your marketing strategy today.

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Cover Story

SEO in a Social Media World Social media is the hottest trend on the Web. Users are flocking to these sites; sharing information and even searching for content. As social networking evolves, search engines are taking notice, too — and techniques for generating traffic and branding are increasingly intersecting in both mediums.

WordPress Font Fun

Departments

Want to differentiate your WordPress site from the rest? Try having some fun with font replacement plugins.

‘Net Briefs: Ultra-fast Internet, Online Video’s Next Challenge, YouTube Captions, Real-time Indexing, Location-based marketing.

Mobile Minute: Apple Cracks Down on Developers, Palm Falls Behind, Mobile Revenue on the Rise.

12 E-commerce Software in Action Online retail is poised for growth. To get the most out of your enterprise, consider focusing on key areas of improvement and the software that can help turn profits.

14 Google Analytics and Editorial Impact Creating quality content is paramount to many business’ online success. make sure you’re getting the most bang for your editorial buck.

18 Top 50: Design Resources

32 Five Outdated SEO Tactics Search engine optimization (SEO) has changed over the years. Ken Lyons points out some old tactics to avoid, and their current alternatives.

34 Climbing the Ranks with Optimized Press Releases Online press releases provide content, generate links and increase visibility. Michelle Wicmandy returns to show how optimized press releases can have even bigger impacts on SEO.

36 Holistic Website Development Today’s websites encompass a vast range of features and functions. Developing a site with a holistic plan will ensure a polished finished product.

40 Managing Website Redesigns

Navigation, user-friendliness and multimedia have all entered the redesign mix. It can be a complex undertaking, unless you have a good plan.

42 The Cost of Hosting What are you paying for Web hosting? And what are you getting?

MAY 2010

20 SEO Corner: The SuperAwesome-Mega-Optimal Guide to Links 22 Conversion Cache: Creating Influence and Trust in a Place of Uncertainty 43 Website Magazine Resource Center 45 Website Magazine Success Corner 48 Commentary: Is Your Web Business a House of Cards?

✐

F R O M T H E E D I TO R

With Peter Prestipino

Inside the Online World The practice of search engine optimization (SEO) has served Web professionals well over the past decade. But there is a new darling in the Web world and she goes by the name of social media. She is sexy, alluring and draws the attention of hundreds of millions of admirers. But should you shun SEO entirely and make a full switch to social? Maybe. But you will need to bring along all of the SEO techniques and tactics you’ve learned and mastered over the years to make social media really work for your enterprise. And, you won’t be alone when you get there.

Visit these upcoming industry trade shows: Search Marketing Expo (SMX) April 8-9 Toronto, Canada PubCon South April 13-15, 2010 Dallas, TX ad:tech April 20-23 San Francisco, CA Web 2.0 Expo May 3-6 San Francisco, CA Conversion Conference May 4-5 San Jose, CA

Forrester is predicting a significant rise in Internet marketing by those in the B2B space. In fact, it’s predicting spend will almost double over the next five years — from $2.3 billion in 2009 to $4.8 billion in 2014. Much of that will be invested in social media marketing. So, taking the medium seriously will greatly benefit your business. Those Web enterprises and entrepreneurs that understand the balance between SEO and social media will be those receiving the most traffic from search engines and social networks, and exposure from those that make the greatest impact on business — the consumer. The feature story in Website Magazine’s May issue, “SEO in a Social Media World” offers a practical glimpse into the techniques and tactics Web enterprises can employ today to improve search engine positioning and attract new users through social media, simultaneously. Once again, an incredible lineup of articles and information briefs from some of the Web’s leading minds fill this issue. In addition to our stellar contributor columns (Tim Ash and Conversion Cache, and Dante Monteverde’s SEO Corner), this month’s absolute must-read list includes Michelle Wicmandy on Press Release Distribution, Ken Lyons on Outdated SEO Tactics, and Lars Johansson on Assessing Editorial Impact with Google Analytics. Other articles not to miss include E-commerce Software in Action, Managing Site Redesigns and the first article from our new Associate Editor, Linc Wonham, on The True Cost of Hosting. Enjoy this issue of Website Magazine and remember to share your stories of ’Net success online at WebsiteMagazine.com. Best Web Wishes,

Peter Prestipino — Editor-in-Chief, Website Magazine Peter@WebsiteMagazine.com

Website Magazine Resource Center

Visit Website Magazine’s Resource Center today by scanning this QR code.

While there is plenty of information in the print edition of Website Magazine and on our daily weblog, we realize sometimes you want to dig a little deeper. For this reason, the Website Magazine Resource Center is now available online. Visitors will find vendor whitepapers, webinars and even feature articles from past editions of Website Magazine. The best Web professionals stay informed, so visit WebsiteMagazine.com/ Resources today!

The Magazine for Website Success 4179 W. Irving Park Rd., Chicago, IL 60641 Toll Free: 1.800.817.1518 International: 1-773-628-2779 Fax: 1-773-272-0920

PUBLISHER: Susan Whitehurst susan@websitemagazine.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Peter Prestipino peter@websitemagazine.com SENIOR EDITOR: Mike Phillips mike@websitemagazine.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Linc Wonham linc@websitemagazine.com *CONTRIBUTORS: Tim Ash Pete Hollier Lars Johansson Ken Lyons Dante A. Monteverde Michelle M. Wicmandy ART DIRECTOR: Jesse Erbach jesse@websitemagazine.com PRODUCTION MANAGER: Janet Crouch www.grafikadesign.net BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT/ADVERTISING: Troy Pickett troy@websitemagazine.com Kelly Springer kspringer@websitemagazine.com

Website Magazine, Volume 5, May 2010, (ISSN# 1942-0633) is published 4 times per year in February, May, August and November with 8 special issues (January, March, April, June, July, September, October and December) by Website Services, Inc., 4179 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago, IL 60641-2971. Periodicals Postage Paid at Chicago, IL and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Website Magazine, 4179 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago, IL 60641-2971. Canada Post: Please send undeliverable items to: 2835 Kew Drive, Windsor ON, N8T 3B7 Copyright 2009 by Website Magazine. All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. For reprints of any article, contact the editor.

*The opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of WebsiteMagazine.

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MAY 2010

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High-speed Chase After weeks of hyping “a significant announcement that will forever change the Internet”, Cisco disclosed details of an upgrade to its routing system that will provide download speeds unlike anything we’ve ever experienced. Cisco estimated that the CRS-3 Carrier Routing System would be available within the calendar year, boasting that it will have the capacity to stream every motion picture ever made in less than four minutes, as well as make it possible for the entire population of China to make a video call at the same time. For now, businesses and consumers will simply have to wait and see if Cisco delivers on its promise, but the announcement itself was more proof of video’s infectious influence on the future of the Internet. “Video brings the Internet to life,” said Cisco CEO John Chambers. “You are moving from a messaging platform to a video platform.” Recent examples of Cisco’s growing interest in the video business include developing its own video technologies and acquiring companies like Flip video devicemaker Pure Digital. Google and the FCC are also each separately planning their own ultra high-speed Internet initiatives aimed at the explosive growth and untapped potential of streaming video. How it all — or who — “will forever change the Internet” remains to be seen, but stay tuned.

John Chambers Cisco CEO

A Bite Out of the Boom? The latest hard data pertaining to the online video boom contained some mixed messages in comScore’s January 2010 rankings, showing a 119-percent increase in overall views from a year ago but a 2.5 percent drop from the previous month. Hulu, which had crossed the one billion-views threshold for the first time in December 2009, fell to 903 million views in January—good for 2.8 percent of the shares. That ranked them second, well behind leader YouTube at 39.5 percent but well ahead of Microsoft Sites (491 million views), Yahoo! Sites (435 million), Viacom (361 million), Fox Interactive (293 million), Turner Network (283 million), AOL (241 million), Vevo (226 million) and CBS Interactive (217 million). When broken down by unique viewers, however, Hulu ranked only fifth, virtually neck and neck with Viacom—which pulled two of the most popular shows from Hulu’s site after 21 months because it was dissatisfied with “the current economic model.” For nearly two years, Hulu served as a co-host for online video of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report. Viacom is the first to pull content from Hulu’s one-stop online video portal in favor of its own free streaming video, indicating it would reconsider if Hulu was willing to change its business model. Hulu, which is contemplating $5 fees for older episodes of television shows, will serve as a referral engine for the two shows unless the two sides get something else worked out. The March and April rankings may be rather telling to the future of the whole online video landscape.

MAY 2010

YouTube Captions to Open New Doors

For Ken Harrenstein, a hearing-impaired software engineer at Google, the news that YouTube is adding captions to all of its videos couldn’t have been bigger. “This is huge,” he said. “It’s what I’ve dreamed of for years.” The impact on businesses utilizing videos for marketing purposes may also be huge, as they will likely get another avenue into Google’s search index. Harrenstein, a graduate of MIT, announced the new auto-caption software for YouTube, saying that he often missed lectures as a student because he couldn’t understand them. With the use of the auto-captions, a student can now find a videotaped lecture on YouTube and search for keywords, landing at the exact moment in the lecture when the professor used those words. Used as a marketing tool as well as a learning tool, it will be interesting to see what YouTube’s new integration of captions does to the way businesses use streaming video.

America's

Riskiest Online Cities Norton released a report in March, 2010, revealing those cities most succeptible to cyber crime — which cost Americans more than $560 million in 2009. Few things sidetrack e-commerce like cyber crime threats. This is a good reminder for e-commerce professionals (especially in the below cities) to ensure consumers that their information is secure — through privacy policies, security badges and a full description of all measures you take — including data encryption — to protect sensitive information.

1.) Seattle, WA 2.) Boston, MA 3.) Washington, D.C. 4.) San Francisco, CA 5.) Raleigh, NC 6.) Atlanta, GA 7.) Minneapolis, MN 8.) Denver, CO 9.) Austin, TX 10.) Portland, OR

Location,

Location Two announcements from Facebook, one officially released and the other to be made at the f8 developer conference at the end of April, indicate perhaps the strongest push yet by the social network for smaller-business advertising dollars. First came news of an alliance with business optimization software provider Omniture, aimed at helping companies more easily integrate Facebook as a marketing channel through “relevant conversations” with its more than 400 million active users. Then came the widely reported but unconfirmed news that Facebook will reveal the arrival of location as a status update available to users. This move will open the doors even wider for local advertisers, and be a direct challenge to Google for small-business ad revenue. It will also very likely rankle millions of users concerned about their privacy, which Facebook has so famously done before. MAY 2010

mobile minute

is Losing Ground — Quickly Palm reported a $22 million loss in its third-quarter earnings; stemming from users' distaste for its operating system and the devices on which they run. Palm sold just 408,000 smartphones in the quarter. Compare that to the iPhone, of which Apple sold 8.7 million units in the same quarter. Palm's stock price plummeted on the news and now stands well below 70 percent of its year-to-date high mark, as of this writing.

MOBILE APP DOWNLOADS, REVENUES SET TO SOAR According to a study by wireless consultant Chetan Sharma, mobile app downloads are set to increase to 50 billion by 2012, up from 7 billion last year. Revenue from these apps (including advertising, downloads and virtual goods) is predicted to hit $17.5 billion, up from $4.1 billion. The study also found that North American consumers pay more per app — an average of $1.09 compared to $0.80 for European consumers.

MAY 2010

Apple Tightens the Reins

on App Developers Apple drew the line for developers by changing some rules and banning thousands of apps deemed to have adult-themed content; which happened to be some of the most downloaded apps in the store. “At the end of the day, Apple has a brand to maintain,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. “And the bottom line is they want that image to be squeaky clean.” Some developers find themselves left in the cold. One developer of the racy apps, Fred Clarke, claims to have lost all 50 of his products on the app store. "It's very hard to go from making a good living to zero," he told The New York Times. Apple also put the clamps on so-called "cookie-cutter apps," such as those that amount to little more than RSS feeds or virtual business cards. And again, many developers, even entire businesses, suddenly find themselves without a product. Those companies that offered apps on the cheap were able to do so because they were doing little more than pulling websites' feeds or publishing a mobile-optimized Web page through an app. Not anymore. On the other end of the spectrum is Google’s open Android system, which should see a nice influx of developers cut off from Apple. Apple also recently announced that developers cannot use geo-location solely to target advertisements to app users. Google, on the other hand, is working with developers to do just that. As it stands, the two app providers have never been further apart. Look forward to a bare-knuckled brawl in one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry.

Font Fun

According to WordPress’ official download counter, the open-source blogging software has been downloaded more than 6.6 million times, as of this writing. Chances are, if you are running WordPress, your site has a lot in common with some other sites out there. And that raises an important question: How do you make your site stand out from the crowd? One way, without laborintensive hacks, is by altering your website’s fonts. If the default font in your WordPress installation is leaving you uninspired, and the concept of tweaking CSS files seems a bit too daunting, try the following WordPress plugins to dress up your design and have some fun.

with WordPress

Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR): FLIR for WordPress implements Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR) by Cory Mawhorter. It is in rapid development and at this time almost completely configurable from the admin panel. Several freeware fonts are provided with FLIR for WordPress. The plugin is SEO-friendly and only renders the image in the browser if JavaScript is enabled. HTML/XHTML code remains unchanged, leaving your head tags readable by search engines and the page readable by those without JavaScript. http://bit.ly/cCdvNe

AnyFont: AnyFont allows for the use of any truetype or opentype font for post titles, menu items or anywhere else you want to use a custom font in your theme design. The plugin supports both PHP4 @ GD or PHP5 & Imagick or GD. A TinyMCE button has been added to the post/page editor in version 0.9, which allows you to insert some AnyFont-styled text into your posts and pages, too. http://bit.ly/bQCzQN WP-Cufon: This plugin makes the process of implementing Cufon (an image replacement technique) into your WordPress blog an absolute breeze. Simply convert your font files and upload them into the plugins directory and you’re done. WordPress admins can even enable objects they want to replace in the WordPress Administration Menu. WP-Cufon is useful for both image replacement (e.g. replacing a logo with text) and SEO. http://bit.ly/dnttud All-in-One Cufon: With All-in-One Cufon, you can replace standard fonts with whatever font you desire. The plugin automatically detects uploaded fonts, offers a preview of uploaded fonts, detection of the fontFamily parameter and provides an option to enable only those fonts you really want to use. http://bit.ly/9Kh64r

AnyFont in Action: Above is a screenshot of the Notepad Theme for WordPress, showing the top and sidebar menus after enabling menu replacements in AnyFont.

Five Sites for FREE Fonts: dafont.com urbanfonts.com acidfonts.com fontstock.net fontspace.com

Font Burner Control Panel: Add any of the 1,000+ free fonts available on the Font Burner website (fontburner.com) directly to your WordPress theme. Find a font you like and simply enter the name into this plugin and your weblog headlines will be instantly transformed. This plugin is a great option if you’re seeking richer typography but do not know how to use sifr or Flash. http://bit.ly/c2FPg2 Typekit Fonts: This plugin allows for the embedding and use of Typekit fonts in your WP or WP MY website without having to edit the theme. Typekit offers a service that allows you to select from a range of hundreds of high quality fonts for your WordPress installation. The fonts are applied using the font-face standard, so they are standards compliant, fully licensed and accessible. To use this plugin you need to sign up with Typekit, install this plugin and then either configure some Typekit selectors or define your own CSS rules. http://bit.ly/9hLgWW

MAY 2010

A ccountant / Tax Services · Advertising Agency · Amusement / Recre Car Body · Repair Shop · B akery / Pastry Shop · Barber / Hair Stylist · Building / Contractor · C afe / Bar · Catering Services · Chiropractor · Cosmetics / Beauty Supplies · Courier Services · D entist · Doctor · D Engineering Consultants · Event Planning · F aith-based Organization G ardening / Landscaping · General Manufacturing · Goods Transport H ardware Store · Heating, Ventilation & Air Conditioning (HVAC) S Design · Investment Adviser · IT-Consulting / Services · J eweler / Jewe M otorcycle Shop · Moving Services · N ightclub · Non-profit Organiza Pharmacy · Photography Studio · Physiotherapy / Massage · Plumber ting Services · R eal Estate · Restaurant · Retail · Retirement Homes · Sports / Outdoor Equipment · Stationery / Office Supply · T ailoring / portation · Travel Agency · V acation Rentals · Veterinarians

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*Visit www.1and1.com for full promotional offer details. Program and pricing specifications and availability subject to change without notice. 1&1 and the 1&1 logo are trademarks of 1&1 Internet AG, all other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. © 2010 1&1 Internet, Inc. All rights reserved.

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eation · Antiques Store · Architectural Firm · Artist / Designer · Auto / · Beauty & Nail Salons · Bed & Breakfast · Bookstore · Bicycle Shop · Civil Engineering · Cleaning Services · Consulting Services · Childcare Driving School · E ducational Services · Electrical Services · Electronics ns · Fashion / Clothing · Florist · Funeral Services · Furniture Store · ting & Hauling · Grocery · Gym / Fitness / Recreational Sports Centers Services · Home Improvement · Hotel · I nsurance Services · Interior elry · L aundry / Dry Cleaning Services · Law office / Notary · Locksmith ations · O ptician · P ainter / Paperhanger · Personal services · Pet Care / Plumbing Contractors · Printing / Duplication Services · PR/ Marke· Roofing · S chool · Shoe Store · Spa · Sports Clubs / Associations · It‘s 2010. What are you waiting for? Alteration Services · Taxi Services · Tiling Services · Toy Store · Trans-

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E-Commerce Software in Action By Peter Prestipino, Editor-in-Chief

Despite the economic downturn that has affected everyone from Madison Avenue to Main Street, the state of the e-commerce industry (despite a noticeable dip in transactions and sales) has remained strong, thanks to continued improvements in technology. Internet retailers that have adopted â&#x20AC;&#x153;best of breedâ&#x20AC;? solutions are expecting big profits in the coming years.

Online retail in both the U.S. and Western Europe is poised for serious growth over the next five years, according to two new forecasts by Forrester Research Inc. U.S. online retail will grow at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years to reach nearly $249 billion by 2014. It can sometimes seem as though there are as many vendors of e-commerce software as there are merchants on the Web. So, understanding the solutions available and the top-tier providers in their respective areas will spur you into action and help you come to a decision that will positively impact the bottom line of your retail endeavor on the Web. What follows are several areas for e-commerce improvements and enhancements for your website, and some vendors who are leading the charge. Product Placement: Savvy e-commerce Web professionals understand that

MAY 2010

to succeed online they need to occupy as much virtual shelf space as possible. ChannelAdvisor supports the mission of Internet retail marketers by offering an on-demand software solution that automates the often labor-intensive manual functions related to distributing products across multiple channels (particularly useful for merchants with hundreds of thousands of SKUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s). The software optimizes campaigns to drive shoppers to products and convert browsers into buyers. ChannelAdvisor works with premium marketplaces and search and shopping services as eBay, Amazon, Overstock, Shopping.com, Nextag and, of course, Google, Yahoo! and Bing. Hard Data: Many people in the e-commerce business make decisions that are not based on empirical data. As you can imagine, that can be a big mistake. The Web offers an opportunity to gather data in real time and make informed decisions

E-Commerce Statistics to Share immediately, based on that information. By testing variations of landing pages, product descriptions, search results and buy-flows, SiteSpect allows marketers to fine-tune every aspect of their website on a segmentby-segment basis. Optimizing marketing effectiveness through A/B testing, multivariate testing and behavioral targeting offers the ability to tweak nearly every element on a website (particularly useful for merchants) on a case-by-case basis. Mobile E-commerce: Shopping cart software vendor Volusion took a rather bold step into the mobile world recently with its launch of Volusion mCommerce; a way for its customers to optimize their online stores for consumers who are smartphone-shopping. Volusion customers (including small retailers that typically do not have access to mobile- optimization capabilities) can enable a setting in their store’s administration panel. Shoppers who navigate to any Volusionpowered site using an iPhone will automatically have access to the mobileoptimized version. In an age where mobile devices are nearing ubiquity, choosing an e-commerce software solution that does not offer some level of mobile compatibility could dampen sales. “Volusion mCommerce allows my customers to view my site in a convenient, snapshot version,” said Andrea Bridges of RepeatPossessions.com. “The popularity of Twitter and other social media platforms is proving that time and space are limited, and people are expecting the kind of simplified interface Volusion is providing. Volusion mCommerce makes shopping more convenient for my customers and will provide me with a revenue boost.” User Experience: One of the key concerns for e-commerce developers is how end-user experience is impacted. Since small modifications can result in big changes, on-demand Web application experience management solutions provided by the likes of Gomez help businesses ensure the most seamless of Web experiences for e-commerce shoppers. Recently, Gomez released an upgraded platform that measures the response time of both mobile and Web applications. The load testing solution tests how mobile sites, ap-

plications and infrastructure (thanks in part to its acquisition by Compuware) respond under peak traffic conditions and then measure the mobile end-user experience. “As applications are increasingly built from multiple third-party components and accessed via an expanding choice of browsers and mobile devices, preventing and resolving Web performance problems becomes exponentially greater and more time-consuming,” said Imad Mouline, CTO, Gomez division. “The upgraded Gomez platform addresses all these issues, helping businesses spend less time troubleshooting and more time delivering great Web and mobile experiences.” Reviews and Testimonials: Few things spark sales more than positive user reviews of your products and services. Founded in 2005, Austin, Texas-based Bazaarvoice provides a hosted social commerce application for featuring user-generated content such as ratings, reviews, answers and stories to manufacturer and retailer sites. These reviews are intended to help jumpstart word-of-mouth and viral marketing and big companies have taken notice. Brooks Brothers, for example, introduced the ratings and reviews solution from Bazaarvoice in October 2009, and encourages its shoppers to review the products they purchase. The review solicitation e-mail, which typically goes out one week after a purchase online or in a store, has the highest open rate of all e-mails sent by the company. Brooks Brothers plans to bring relevant star ratings and review content into its spring catalog and upcoming e-mail campaigns. Brooks Brothers also plans to integrate Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews into future social networking and mobile shopping initiatives.

Launch a new e-commerce venture today and you might be met with some skepticism by friends, colleagues and investors. Fear not; e-commerce isn’t a trend but now a way of life. In the U.S., Web shopping will account for 8 percent of total sales by 2014. More importantly, 53 percent of total retail sales in the U.S. will be influenced by e-commerce, as consumers increasingly use the Internet to research products before purchasing.

Private Sale @ Totsy A new trend in e-commerce offers big promises for retailers and even bigger savings for shoppers. It is called the “Private Sale” or “Exclusive Sale” model and represents a new way of buying and selling on the ‘Net. What is unique about the model (initially spawned by French-owned Vente-Privee.com seven years ago) is that user access to products on these sites is restricted (or private, by invitation only). The private nature creates a sense of exclusivity for shoppers and ultimately helps merchants move high-end inventory in a discreet but wellbranded, exclusive boutique-style environment. The private sale model has recently been formally introduced into the U.S. at Totsy.com, a private sale website dedicated to moms and moms-to-be. Totsy features products on its site from toys to car seats for a limited time (just a few days) and typically at 40-70 percent off the traditional price. The technology is also quite simple, requiring nothing more than some marketing savvy and good connections.

Much more goes into success with e-commerce than simply choosing the right shopping cart and merchant account provider. As you can see, there are many e-commerce solutions available on the market that go beyond supporting marketing endeavors, but create a clear and distinct separation from you and your competition.

MAY 2010

Evaluate Editorial Impact Using Google Analytics By Lars Johansson

Many editors feel that once content has been created and uploaded, their job is done. That’s not true. If you don’t measure, you can’t analyze. If you don’t analyze, you can’t improve. And the easiest way to analyze is by implementing Google Analytics. It's free, so there is no excuse not to use it. And, yes, it works for intranets, too. Using Web analytics, you can measure the effectiveness of content. It is possible to measure how well the content is performing even for purely informational websites, including intranets, that are not supported by advertising or product sales. One of the first things you need to do — a step that is easy to miss — is to make sure you filter out writers and editors from your statistics. Otherwise, your data will be bloated and inaccurate. Do this by filtering individual or a range of IP addresses within your analytics account. You are not allowed to store personally identifiable information (such as social security numbers or names) in Google Analytics. You may, however, store data that can group visitors together in different clusters. For intranets, that may be categories such as divisions and departments. For websites, it could be consumers and businesses. By using custom variables to group visitors together, you

will be able to analyze how different groups of visitors behave. From there, content can be optimized to best fit its target audience. Keep in mind that file downloads are not automatically tracked by Google Analytics. For example, if you want to track PDF downloads, you need to trigger a virtual page view when a visitor is clicking on links to them. Six measurements to maximize impact. There are many different key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be measured. Those best to track varies from company to company, and site to site. If you feel uncertain, talk to a Web analytics consultant. Too many pages and don’t know where to start? Prioritize what pages to optimize by looking at such indicators as bounce rate, read rate, $-index (monetary or goal-value contribution) and satisfaction. Also check page-view volume (which will tell you something about impact) and number of entrances (which shows how relevant the bounce rate is). Some of those metrics, however, require additional configuration and JavaScript code on your website. Below are six KPIs to measure and analyze to make sure your website’s content is meeting your business objectives. 1. Readings per writer and writer impact

Find out how many times a particular writer’s articles are being read, the number of conversions taking place as a Continued on page 16

MAY 2010

Continued from page 14

result of those articles, how long those visits lasted (best measured in intervals — use the Length of Visit report under Visitor Loyalty), and more. This is done by segmenting and creating reports based on a custom variable, as described below. How to measure it: Start by editing the tracking script on your website that is used by Google Analytics. • Trigger a page-level custom variable after a certain number of seconds on a page. • Base the timer on a reasonable amount of time it takes to read an article. • Add the name of the writer to a custom variable and the URL + “(read)” in _trackPageview(). This will result in the writer’s name being tied to the page and the page being marked as “read.” • In “Top Content” you'll have two entries for article1 that look like this: “/article1/index.php” and “/article1/index.php (read)”. You can filter the Top Content report by “(read)” to see how many times different articles have been read. • If you only want to look at articles by a specific writer, use an advanced segment based on the custom variable containing the writer’s name. Keep in mind that triggering an extra page view, as will be done above, will affect other metrics such as number of page views, page views/visit and bounce rate. 2. Page impact By configuring goals, you can find out how frequently, and during which visits a certain page was viewed and led to goal completions, and the total goal value for those visits. How well have those visits performed compared to other visits? How to measure it: Create an advanced segment including only visits during which a specific page, or a certain group of pages has been viewed. 3. Satisfaction Measuring visitor satisfaction per writer and page adds an important dimension to your analysis. Imagine if you could find out how satisfied readers of specific writers are? You can. How to measure it: There are two ways. You can incorporate the possibility to give a rating for an individual page, or you can trigger a survey after the user has completed certain actions, spent a certain amount of time on the site, or left the site. The key is to store the grade in Google Analytics. By combining behavioral and attitudinal data in Google Analytics, you will be able to see how frequently certain pages or

MAY 2010

writers have been involved in high- and low-satisfaction visits. Survey data can be stored as custom variables or virtual page views, depending on what works best for you. 4. Time spent writing vs. reading This measurement can show if there are pages that readers spend less time reading than the writers and editors spend creating. It is particularly valuable for intranets or websites with low traffic. If you spend a lot of time on an article and few people read it, you’ve either failed at marketing the article or it’s simply not appealing to readers. Besides learning what content works best, this KPI will let you know how well writers are spending their time. How to measure it: This requires a CMS hack. The company I work for built a simple plug-in for EPiServer (a .Net Web Content Management System) showing how much time has been spent editing individual pages and groups of pages. You may be able to build something similar in your own CMS. Caveat: It will paint the true picture only if all writing is done directly in the CMS. 5. Unread pages Pages need to generate at least one page view to be included in Google Analytics. Pages with no views will not be listed. If you do not track unread pages, you cannot accurately measure the average amount of page views per article or the average amount of readings per article. Both of those metrics are valuable to evaluate content. This may not be an issue for everyone, but for websites containing thousands of pages, it’s not always the case that every single page has been viewed at least once during any given time period. How to measure it: To find pages that did not generate a single page view or reading, you need to match a list of pages from your CMS with page-view data from Google Analytics. I recommend using Excellent Analytics, a free plug-in for Microsoft Excel, when combining data from Google Analytics with data from other systems. You can download it for free from: http://excellentanalytics.com/. 6. Cost per reading Some organizations have goals stating that writers need to produce a certain amount of articles per week. I believe that it is more important to measure the impact of a writer’s articles, rather than sheer volume of articles created. How to measure it: Cost per reading = writer cost/number of times the writer’s articles have been read. Better articles should generate more readings. Writers should strive to achieve a low cost per reading and a high satisfaction score.

Lars Johansson works for Mark Red (www.markred.se,)a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) and Google Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant (WOAC). He blogs about web analytics and testing at www.WebAnalysts.Info.

TO P

DESIGN RESOURCES cssbeauty.com

WEBSITES

When it comes to your Web design, where do you (or your designers) look for inspiration? Chances are good that it’s most often the websites of your competitors. While that’s certainly one way to do some valuable benchmarking, you wouldn’t want to create a knock-off of someone else’s work, right?

Perhaps the best way to get inspired for a specific design project is to look outside of the sites you visit most and even further beyond your comfort zone toward all that is good and exciting in “creative” being developed today. So where do you look for that kind of guidance and insight? Developing a list of sites to help Website Magazine readers find something as abstract as design inspiration is challenging, if not completely impossible to do fairly or objectively. Awesome design is everywhere and originates from every corner of the Web. What might be downright edgy and exciting to one person, however, can be the exact opposite of what others think is attractive. There is no single answer (much less 50), so assembling a list of sources for Web design inspiration is ultimately up to you, the designer, or someone responsible for overseeing design. (Read about managing redesign on page 34). However, keeping tabs on trends is far easier when you know where to start looking. So, let’s consider this month’s Top 50 list an excellent starting point. What we found most interesting when aggregating these online resources is the number of those specializing in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), indicating that a formal shift toward separating style and design from content is complete. Another interesting thing about design trends is that they are quickly duplicated — once you see it one place, you are bound to see it pretty much everywhere else soon after. Drop shadows — awesome, but everywhere. Big, bold graphics in the headers? Been there, done that. If you’re feeling frustrated trying to find something new, fear not. Visit a few of the sites listed here and you will quickly be able to formulate your own opinion on what current Web designers think Internet professionals want. Mashing up that analysis with your own competitive design benchmarks and intuition will you give the best chance possible of finding the design that meets your own desires, while balancing the needs of your website visitors.

ABOUT THIS RANKED DATA Website Magazine’s Top 50 rankings are a measure of a website’s popularity. Ranks are calculated using a proprietary method that focuses on average daily unique visitors and page views over a specified period of time, as reported by multiple data sources. The website with the highest combination of factors is ranked in the first position. Conducting research, making formal comparisons and talking to existing clients and users before making any purchase decisions is always recommended.

MAY 2010

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

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SEO CORNER

With Dante A. Monteverde

THE SUPER-AWESOME-MEGA-OPTIMAL GUIDE to Links for Traffic and Search Engine Exposure You have no traffic, and you

You may have used some of the strategies, channels and tactics discussed in SEO Corner to acquire new links (and visitors) but I’ll bet your website you haven’t tried them all. If you have tried them all but are still not getting traffic (or as much as you want) you need to revisit each and every one, and do so frequently. The one true secret of link building is that the best link has yet to be discovered. So staying on top of new traffic sources, distribution models and publicity opportunities will feed your website links that result in traffic and exposure well into the future. know it. Let’s change that.

Dante A. Monteverde is a search strategist specializing in Search Engine Optimization. He founded SpiderBait.com in 1996 and has more than 13 years of SEO experience. Contact Dante at dante@spiderbait.com.

Public Relations: Press releases don’t get enough credit as a means to drive website traffic, links and exposure for your websites and their underlying businesses. Services such as PRWeb, BusinessWire, PR.com, and PRNewswire are proven ways to get in front of not just the media but other website owners looking for content to feature on their sites (which means more links). While there is no guarantee that coughing up the often exorbitant fees to these providers will result in actual or immediate media exposure, you will be surprised at the speed at which you will acquire inbound links. Classifieds: You might also be surprised at the amount of visitors that will come to your site based solely on classified advertising — free or paid. Some of the best sites available in

Things to Avoid When Link Building There always seems to be a longer list of “don’ts” than “do’s” but knowing what will get you penalized and staying far away from those practices will prove useful. Avoiding link farms and off-topic links, not relying too heavily on reciprocal links and paid links (at least those that are noticeable — i.e. stay away from companies offering these services) is sound, sane and safe advice.

MAY 2010

the classified industry include craigslist, Oodle, USFreeAds, Backpage and Kijii but local newspapers are also a good way to get some attention, especially if you are working on a local or regional level. The best part about using classified advertising to drive traffic is that the cost is often far lower than other promotional methods, if not completely free. But it’s not just the broad-scope classified sites that can generate attention. There are hundreds if not thousands of classifieds in every industry, providing an exceedingly targeted opportunity to generate new links of some notable quality. Video: Another opportunity to gain exposure, and get links and traffic, is through the use of online video. While there are financial and time commitments to creating video, going viral can help get your website to a tipping point far faster than any other online channel. YouTube is by far the king of video sites, but there are hundreds of others including Vimeo, Blip.tv, Viddler, 5min, Dailymotion.com, and MetaCafe. Are you distributing your videos to these outlets? Are you monitoring your videos’ success or failure, and watching the performance of others in these channels to see what’s getting noticed or ignored? If not, you need to be. If video is a serious consideration for your website, placing your content exclusively on YouTube is a good bet. Create a YouTube channel (even if you don’t have video content yet) and “friend” related users and “favorite” quality videos. The link from the YouTube Channel to your website is a do-follow link. Content Development: The information age requires that you produce ... information. Take up a campaign to write content for others by reaching out to bloggers who cover related topics (find some guest blogging prospects at BlogCatalog.com). There are many exceptional article directories where you will be able to submit your content including EzineArticles.com, Buzzle.com, GoArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com, ArticleAlley.com and Amazines.com. These are just a few of the more well known directories but there are hundreds of others. Another very valuable opportunity is through Google Knol. Because any link from Google is worth getting, create content for a Knol and include some links — they too, are do-follow.

Getting Social: Social media has changed the way we connect with others and promote our products and services on the Web. From social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, Bebo and hi5 to microblogging services like Twitter, Plurk and Plazes — even social bookmarking services such as Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Mixx, Reddit and others — “social” presents wonderful opportunities to chart the course of memes and discussions, and are widely known as effective ways to create huge streams of website traffic and, ultimately, inbound links. Directories: DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory are two exceptional places to attempt to acquire links to your website, but there can be incredibly long wait times (DMOZ) and high prices (Yahoo!) to get included. Consider some alternatives including Business.com, BestofTheWeb.com, GoGuides.com, JoeAnt, RubberStamped.org, Skaffe.com, SiteSnoop.com, Gimpsy.com, IPL.org and MassiveLinks.com.

Things to Remember When Link Building Nothing is more important to your success on popular search engine results pages than the number and quality of inbound links. Remember as you start a link building campaign, that links marked “nofollow” will not pass any value or increase the Google Page Rank of the site’s page being linked to. You may also want to alternate the anchor text of incoming links so they look as natural as possible – include different keywords and link to different pages on your site. As always, target links from diverse IP’s, ones that are topically relevant, authoritative and trustworthy.

data

MAY 2010

tree™

CONVERSION CACHE

With Tim Ash

Creating Influence and Trust in a Place of Uncertainty Many marketing

Dr. Robert Cialdini, president of Influence At Work (InfluenceAtWork.com), is regarded as the world’s highest authority on persuasion and influence. His books have sold millions of copies, and some of his most important findings are entirely applicable to the online marketing environment. What Cialdini was able to formulate through his work are several principles of universal persuasion that operate across all cultures and circumstances. You can think of these as automatic compliance mechanisms that, once set into motion, are

Authority and expertise must be established before you ask someone to act. Otherwise, you become a blowhard and self-promoter. You can either borrow authority from others, or present them with your expertise. In order to be credible, you must demonstrate knowledge and trustworthiness. No one can beat you as a communicator if you have these two elements. That means that you must present information in an unbiased way. But how do you establish trust if there is no time to build trustworthy interactions? How do you produce instant credibility? There is a very good method for doing just that.

very difficult to resist. According to Dr. Cialdini, the six universal principles of persuasion are: Reciprocation — People tend to return a favor. Give to get: small unsolicited gifts results in outsized return obligation being placed on the receiver. Scarcity — If I can’t have it, I want it. Perceived scarcity will generate more demand. Authority — If an expert says it, it must be true. People tend to obey authority figures, or even just those with the trappings of authority. Consistency — If people publicly take even a small stand on an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment. They will get behind their stated beliefs with action. Consensus — People will look for “social proof” of the similarities of others’ actions under the same circumstances. Liking — People are easily persuaded by people they like and are attracted to. Some of these principles are especially important under conditions of uncertainty, which should be of particular interest to Internet marketers. The Internet is a sweeping, everchanging communications network that creates uncertainty in its wake.

Using this tactic because it: 1) Shows your knowledge of both the pros and cons of a particular product or service, and 2) Establishes your trustworthiness, because you are willing to show the negative.

Authority

Consensus

professionals believe that, because the Internet is a new medium, new rules Tim Ash is the CEO of SiteTuners.com, a landing page optimization firm that offers conversion consulting, full-service guaranteed-improvement tests, and software tools to improve conversion. He is the chairperson of ConversionConference.com and a frequent speaker at top Internet marketing conferences. Tim is the author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization.

and techniques must be invented.They are mistaken. Many timeless principles apply to online marketing but have largely been ignored.

When people are uncertain, they don’t look inside of themselves. They look outside, to the counsel of legitimate experts. — Robert Cialdini

MAY 2010

Before the most compelling portion of your argument, mention the weakness and drawbacks of your product or service. — Robert Cialdini You read that correctly — accentuate the negative.

Unlike most online marketers, don’t wait until the end of your pitch, press release or blog post to mention your weakness. State it early. Otherwise, your strongest argument is “bouncing off of walls of disbelief.” Consider these time-tested and strong headlines: • Avis: We’re #2, so we try harder. • Loreal: We are expensive, but you're worth it. In both of these examples, a negative is mentioned upfront, but used to ultimately accentuate the positive. In Avis’ case, their number two ranking in the industry is forcing them to focus on serving the customer better. Loreal is going to cost you, but they only want to deliver the best to the consumer. Research from psycholinguistics indicates that for practical purposes “but” means “take the info I just told you and put it away; focus instead on what I am going to tell you next.” Just change the sequence of the words you use, and multiply your profits.

When people are uncertain, they don’t look inside of themselves. They look outside, to the counsel of legitimate experts. — Robert Cialdini

We see it all the time — your role models are your peers. Much to the chagrin of many parents, the biggest influence on most teenagers is their circle of close friends. It almost doesn’t matter what your tribes are, and all of us informally belong to many. BMW owners, iPhone users and Burning Man devotees are much more likely to tune in to the behavior of like-minded people. Two important aspects of such “social proof” are especially important: • The Many others • Comparable others The Many implies that something is a “hit” or leader in your specific community or tribe. Once trends take off, the momentum of the leaders makes them very hard to overtake. Any objective evidence of leadership within a particular tribe or subgroup is very important. Comparability is a sense of how similar someone is to oneself. For example, I will not be influenced nearly as much by the actions of others with whom I do not identify. So, the closer the marketing is aligned with my specific circumstances and relationships, the better. In a landmark study, Dr. Cialdini changed the messaging on hotel bathroom signs, across three different price points ranging from inexpensive to luxury brands. The signs asked guests to hang up their towels after use if they did not want them washed, and to leave them on the floor if they wanted fresh towels. Each request was identical, except for the type of messaging used in the headline.

• “Recycle and do it for environment” — this was the standard control and resulted in 38-percent compliance from guests. This was followed by one of the following two headlines. • “Cooperate and join us” — this resulted in a lower, 36-percent compliance because it was perceived as a self-serving request on the part of the hotel to save on operating expenses. You can’t claim partnership, you must earn partnership. • “The majority of guests are reusing towels at least once during their stay” — this appeal to The Many portion of the consensus principle resulted in a much-improved 46percent compliance score. But how do you create a sense of comparability in this setting, when anonymous and random people stay at the hotel? What possible kinship of comparability can there be among them to further turbo-charge results? As it turns out, even a tenuous kind of kinship is enough. The next headline tested was: • “The majority of people who stayed in this room are reusing towels at least once during their stay” — this combination of The Many with Comparable resulted in a stunning 54percent compliance rate. The use of appropriate testimonials is critical. And the testimonials should not come just from experts but also from peers. They should also change in order depending on the target audience. Lead with the most comparable circumstances. The Internet is a place of uncertainty for many people. It evolves quickly, and often the sheer number of choices can be overwhelming. Create authority and trust in this environment and you will be able to influence action — under any circumstances.

MAY 2010

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BY PETER PRESTIPINO, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF AND MIKE PHILLIPS, SENIOR EDITOR

Web professionals’ interest in search engine optimization (SEO) is matched in intensity only by the excitement surrounding social media. The end result of these two Internet marketing endeavors is nearly the same: website traffic and brand exposure — not to mention stronger customer relationships.

MAY 2010

While SEO tends to be more technical (at least it is perceived to be so), social media optimization (SMO) leans more toward developing a process to establish quality relationships where trust and confidence are the aim. It can be argued, however, that the techniques and tactics employed in each practice are universal and interchangeable. It is difficult to deny that a tremendous opportunity for profit exists when we employ (or at least think about) common SEO best practices and apply them within our social media world.

HOW DO

YOU COMPARE (TO GOOGLE)? In early March, Google released its own SEO Report Card, an effort to provide the company’s product teams with ideas on how they could improve their products’ pages using ac-

To make the most of the current Web landscape, a formal plan is required — one that provides an understanding of the audience to which you are marketing your products and services, takes into account the quality and quantity of content you will need, and establishes measurable goals for the benefit of your business. If the horizon from whence you work looks bleak when it comes to either SEO or SMO, fear not — you’re about to rocket your website into a new stratosphere on the Internet planet. It comes down to this: SEO in a social media world provides you an opportunity to make a more meaningful impact on existing users and prospects than either practice alone, making your enterprise more genuine and providing the ability to explore channels that may have previously seemed walled, inaccessible and alien.

SEO FAILINGS Most websites struggle with SEO, and it is not just the Internet mom-and-pops. SEO technology and service provider Conductor (which calls the likes of NetFlix, Progressive Insurance and other notable names as clients) released a research report (Natural Search Trends of the Fortune 500) in mid-February that detailed search visibility and optimization effectiveness of Fortune 500 companies. How did they fare? Not so well. More than half of the companies had almost no natural search visibility with their targeted keywords, defined as not ranking within the top 100 natural search results. Sound similar to your own troubles? Only two percent of the domains surveyed (those associated with the actual companies) showed a significant number of their keyword terms in the top results. The problem is not only that these companies and others are failing in the complex world of SEO. They are now simultaneously seduced by the promise of riches, popularity and consumer endearment from participating in the social media world. The worst part for Web professionals is that regular Web users are turning a blind eye to corporate social media and its real-time nature. Online marketing firm OneUpWeb’s recent eye-tracking study revealed some interesting findings about real-time and perhaps, in many respects, the impact that “social” has on search results. Of the participants in the study, 73 percent had never heard of real-time results, and only a quarter of the consumers cared for the real-time results, compared to 47 percent of the

cepted optimization techniques. The project looked at the main pages of 100 different Google products, measuring them across a dozen common optimization categories. So how did Google fare? All things considered, they could do better. The report card indicated that Google needs some serious work on its search result presentation (title tag format and length, description meta tag use, and site links), its URLs and redirection, and even its on-page optimization practices including the use of <h1> tags and alt text. Google did receive some “satisfactory” grades on many practices. The “optimization” suggestions were intended to not only help search engines understand the content of our pages better, but also to improve our users’ experience when visiting our sites. Simple steps such as fixing 404s and broken links, simplifying URL choice, and providing easier-tounderstand titles and snippets for our pages can benefit both users and search engines.

MAY 2010

tion often receive the most attention. Over the

“information foragers.” Couple that with recent news that social media may have peaked and you have a perfect storm that is sure to upset the balance of promotions on the World Wide Web. It’s not off base to think that most consumers have no idea that social is making its way into search. The solution is to make our brands as consistent and value-added as possible — wherever consumers interact with it. So how do we apply the SEO principles that we know work for generating competitive first-page rankings to social media, and vice-versa? In short, it comes down to how content is developed and shared. But first it’s necessary to discuss the basics of getting social with SEO. A common and damaging misconception is that SEO is separate from the marketing strategy of a business. In reality, integrating SEO into existing business practices is essential these days, and if you plan on achieving any level of success you will need a formal plan.

past few months, our editors have addressed

TAKE THE RIGHT APPROACH

important questions in the field of SEO includ-

Just as you wouldn’t get in a taxi without knowing your destination, you would not want to promote and position your website (or its underlying business) without a formal strategy. When it comes to SEO and SMO, reaching your objectives requires that as much attention be paid to the content you provide as to how the broader community will interact with it. Since it is the content that people will ultimately discover and share first, if you are publishing the wrong type of content, you will arrive at the wrong destination.

HELPFUL SEO

RESEARCH Website Magazine periodically publishes special reports on a variety of subject matter important to your Internet success. As you might imagine, studies on search engine optimiza-

ing Website Size, Alt Text, and Keyword Richness in domain names, sub-domains, folders and page names. Here’s what we learned: WEBSITE SIZE: The size of a website (the number of pages) does not have any direct bearing on how well a website ranks for a particular search term. http://bit.ly/9CxcQA ALT TEXT: Providing alternate text to images is an important part of on-page optimization, but more importantly provides an opportunity to be in line with accessibility standards. http://bit.ly/4xpROB KEYWORD RICHNESS: The Cross-engine keyword richness inquiry indicated that those responsible for SEO should definitely name folders, not focus on page naming, consider keywords in subdomains and opt for keywords in their domains. http://bit.ly/5LoFCB

MAY 2010

Content Development Developing content-based promotions for our current or prospective audiences requires being familiar with their behavior, those users’ preferences and how they will share and publish content within their own network and among the social graph they have established. One way is to use social media monitoring software, like that provided by Radian6, to stay on top of conversations and the influencers who initiate them. But you don’t need to be a creative genius to come up with innovative ideas for content. Many top e-commerce websites rely strongly on leveraging user-generated content. Amazon.com is an excellent example. Notice how strongly they leverage user-generated product reviews and recommendations, allowing them to display unique content for nearly every product, on an ongoing basis. Somewhat similar to expert product reviews, but at the category level, are buyer’s guides — informative, unique articles designed to educate potential buyers about particular product categories or industries. What about informational and service-oriented websites? Nothing works better than an education or information section. Simply add a section to an existing website and publish unique and linkable content related to your company or the industry it serves. You will find when creating content that its eventual success does not always rely on the quality of the content, but how it is presented — offering it to users in creative, interesting ways. For this, you will need to take the time to brainstorm. Think of ways that you could change your users’ experiences that would be so interesting or helpful that others would want to link to your website, and/or share that content with their networks. For example, if your website sold pet toys, perhaps you could create a fun tool that would determine a pet’s personality, display a personality analysis, and recommend toys based on that. Or, a humorous video of a pet playing with a popular toy could be embedded on a social network, sent via a Twitter update

and posted on YouTube — complete with a description of the product and a link where it can be purchased, of course. But it’s not just the quality of content, it’s increasingly the quantity (as well as its frequency) that matters. A study of 2,168 HubSpot customers shows businesses that published at least 5 blog articles in the last 7 days draw 6.9 times more organic search traffic and 1.12 times more referral traffic than those who don’t blog at all. This finding coincides with common sense: out of large chunks of business-relevant content (one post per weekday), blog readers will likely find something engaging and proceed to learn more about a company. They might even share that content with their peers. As important as it is that content resonates with a Web audience, it won’t mean much if that content does not in some way satisfy the objectives of an enterprise. Those objectives can differ greatly per industry or by the type of site that you own or operate, but they are routinely website traffic, brand exposure, inbound link generation or actual leads and sales. While companies have historically been reliant on SEO to drive marketing or sales, social media requires a different tack. So, alternative objectives and measurements apply.

Multi-channel SMO The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search. For example, search for a popular brand term today and it is likely you will find YouTube channels, Twitter accounts and Facebook Fan Pages on the first page of search results where negative reviews, complaints and brand squatters once ruled that real estate. What this means is that to succeed with SEO in a social media world, we need to think long and hard about how to distribute content and create a tactical approach to user sharing. While you can foster the sharing process with tools like ShareThis or AddThis, many companies are turning to Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect to take their communities (as well as the inevitable sharing that goes on with the right content) to a different level. These solutions, while still new, are being widely adopted and present a noteworthy opportunity to shore up support within an existing network. But what about outside of your own site — how do you ensure that your message is shared across your social graph in a way that is consistent with the original meaning and intent? Social community platform Awareness Networks launched some intriguing multi-channel publishing features on its platform which puts content directly on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and others without the manual legwork. Often, publishers have great content to share but it needs to be managed like a corporate asset. For example, who can access certain social media channels and what kind of content can or should go there? In essence, companies looking to optimize social marketing channels face significant control issues surrounding brand image and messaging across multiple channels. But perhaps the biggest problem with SMO is measuring the effectiveness of multiple platforms. Efforts tend to become an ROI “black hole” with no empirical data to make informed business decisions. Therefore, it’s critical that businesses set a formal plan and utilize even the most basic of analytics to measure how each platform is performing. Should Twitter, for example, outperform Facebook in terms of generating traffic and increasing time-on-site, then efforts and perhaps budget should be shifted accordingly. However, this would not mean that Facebook should be abandoned. Social media is a moving target — only by watching closely will you know when it’s time to step up efforts on a different channel.

HAS “SOCIAL”

PEAKED? It cannot be argued that social media is the Web’s hottest trend. But is this trend really a fad? New data from Compete.com shows that every major social network on the Web lost unique visitors from January to February 2010. A look at the numbers: ■ Facebook.com: -4.32% ■ MySpace.com: -11.52% ■ Twitter.com: -9.63% ■ LinkedIn.com: -8.3%

Of course, the number of participants on these networks is still too high to ignore. But it would be wise to remember that social media is there to serve businesses, not the other way around.

MAY 2010

A DIGG

RENAISSANCE? Digg.com was one of the original sharing sites, offering users the ability to post and share stories with the community. It could also deliver a deluge of traffic — if you knew how to game the system and with a little luck. Falling on hard times in recent years, Digg is going a different direction. Hoping to become a pioneer in “content curation,” Digg plans to provide personal home pages for every user, to help filter, rank and sort shared content from across the Web - including from Facebook and Twitter.

Keyword Optimization One of SEO’s most tried and true practices is the use of keywords to help search engines index content. And it’s no different in the social media space. Profile descriptions and content, as well as updates to networks, should include keywords and phrases that are directly related to the content a user can expect to find after clicking a link, or reading the rest of the update. However, this is not to suggest that updates are to be keyword-stuffed. Remember that social media is intended to appeal to humans. That means using keywords mixed with a conversational tone to appeal to both search spiders and people. Anchor text in links must use keywords as well — both those links pointing to your website and to other social profiles. Most popular keyword tools will provide information on what users are searching for, but why reinvent the wheel? SEMRush provides content marketers valuable insights into the keyword visibility (organic and paid) for any website. HowSociable is a useful tool to quickly gauge the social presence of a particular keyword or brand name but there are others (of varying levels) such as PostRank, Trackur, Social Mention, TechrigySM2 and even Google Alerts to understand the depth of presence for social media campaigns. It could prove to be immensely valuable to know for what terms and content the competition is optimizing. Gathering that data (whether manually or through a service) at the start of any optimization process becomes integral not just to SEO efforts but also to SMO campaigns.

As more information is shared at a breakneck pace, many users find themselves steeped in information overload. Digg hopes that by providing a system to help the most important and relevant stories rise to the top for individual users (their original goal many years ago), users will come back.

Digg has years of experience in the social networking and content sharing business, so keep an eye on these developments for new opportunities.

MAY 2010

Generating Links SEO’s golden child is the incoming link. While one might not think of SMO as a legitimate link-building strategy, the opportunity is most certainly there. Start by linking all of your business’ social profiles together, and to your website. This will help your brand dominate the search results pages for a branded search, as well as give users immediate options as to where they would like to connect with your business. But the best opportunity for generating links is in your content. Social is built on sharing and that means sharing links. While, at this time, links originating from social profiles is not weighted heavily by search engines, that will likely change. The simple fact is that users are spending more time on social media and, as a result, obtaining more information from these sources. A bonus is that, invariably, high-quality social content will generate links to your website from outside the social world, too. You can bet that just about every blogger, PR firm and news source is plugged in to social media — and they are looking for content to publish, and to link to from their own sites. By involving SEO insight in a social media marketing effort and vice-versa, marketers, public relations professionals and advertisers can extend the value of their promotional investment. Well-optimized social media content marketing efforts can attract new network participants via search and through social networks, and facilitate links to websites directly and indirectly. The greatest benefit marketers and advertisers enjoy by thinking SEO when starting social media campaigns is that content exists — and is shared — long after campaigns have ended.

pub

OUTDATED SEO TACTICS AND 5 ALTERNATIVES

BY KEN LYONS

In the past it was easier to achieve high search engine rankings by “gaming” the system with questionable SEO tactics. But as search engines have evolved, many suspect SEO practices have been rendered useless. However, if you visit any SEO forum or upstart SEO blog, you will see many of these outdated tactics still endorsed as legitimate techniques. In an attempt to end the misinformation, below are five popular, yet outdated SEO tactics that no longer work — and some legitimate alternatives.

MAY 2010

KEYWORD STUFFING

In the late 1990s, search engines were unsophisticated. The more frequently a keyword appeared in a page’s content, the better it ranked. This practice of “keyword stuffing” was an easy way to manipulate search rankings. Since then, search engines and their algorithms have matured. What to do instead: Stuffing pages with keywords can have a negative impact; as Google actively imposes penalties on gamed content. So if you want your keywords to have maximum impact, it’s far better (and safer) to employ legitimate SEO practices, such as: • Creating content for people, not search engines • Making sure keywords are present in prominent regions of your Web page; such as headers, subheads, title tags and meta description snippets • Structuring a website so that important keyword pages are high up in the site architecture and easily found by both search engines and people

BLOG COMMENT SPAMMING

Many search marketers and webmasters still aggressively drop links in blog comments as their primary link building strategies. This outdated SEO tactic is better known as blog comment spamming. To address the abuse, Google introduced nofollow link tags (a signal to search engine spiders to ignore a link) and is known to devalue links in blog comments. What to do instead: Rather than comment spam, try producing something of value. Creating well-written, engaging and thought-provoking content is one of the best ways to attract quality links, naturally. Good content often generates editorial links — naturally occurring links from other blogs and news sources that search engines value far more than comments in blog posts.

SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION

I’m still amazed by how many companies offer search engine submission as a service. I’m equally amazed by how many professional Web developers and designers still believe that submitting to search engines is necessary. It is not. Google’s ability to discover and index new content is so advanced that search engine submission is obsolete. So, paying a company for a search engine submission service is a waste of money. What to do instead: To ensure that your new website gets discovered quickly, get links. This can be as quick and easy as dropping a link to your website on a social media platform. For example, if you have a Twitter account, tweet a link to your new website or add it as your profile link. Twitter is crawled by search engines

constantly; so a link to your new site will be discovered quickly. To increase your chances of getting found, use a site like Ping.fm, which offers the ability to post a message and link to dozens of social media sites simultaneously.

META TAG OPTIMIZATION

There was a time when meta tags (snippets of information embedded in the <HEAD> area of a page’s code) played a large role in influencing search engine rankings. This was particularly true of the “meta keywords” attribute; a common way for site owners to reinforce terms important to their websites. However, unscrupulous site owners and SEOs abused the meta keywords attribute by including misleading terms entirely unrelated to their content. What to do instead: These days, Google is on record as saying they pay no attention to the meta keywords tag. So, the era of keyword stuffing meta tags for impact is officially dead. If your objective is to optimize a website or blog pages to rank for more keywords, try using category and tag systems to better label and organize your website content. Actively tagging your posts and pages is one of the most effective ways to enhance functionality, usability and overall “searchability.”

LINK EXCHANGES

Exchanging links or reciprocal linking is a popular method of building links. Website owners exchange inbound links with one another in an attempt to improve site rankings and traffic. Reciprocal links in moderation are not really an issue; as interlinking is glue that binds the Web. The trouble occurs when website owners actively engage in link exchange schemes to intentionally influence rankings — which Google deems a violation. What to do instead: Rather than participating in link exchange schemes, offer testimonials to business vendors you work with. Providing testimonials is an easy way to get a link to your website in return for writing something favorable and sincere about a vendor. SEO, like any other industry, undergoes changes as it evolves. Be sure to avoid the outdated techniques mentioned here. Not only will your website suffer in rankings (to the satisfaction of your competition), but even worse — your site might be penalized for banned tactics.

Ken Lyons is Senior Marketing Manager at WordStream, a keyword research tool provider for discovering profitable SEO keywords. He is a frequent contributor to the WordStream Internet Marketing Blog.

MAY 2010

CLIMBING UP THE RANKS

WITH OPTIMIZED PRESS RELEASES Want publicity? Submit an optimized press release, say today’s leading online PR experts. Whether you’re targeting journalists, consumers or all of the above, an optimized press release can create endless possibilities for your business.

By Michelle M. Wicmandy

Unlike traditional press releases that for years were limited to providing news for the media, general business announcements have gained acceptance in a world in which we can reach millions of Internet users directly. Online press releases are appropriate for almost any occasion, says Joan Stewart, president of The Publicity Hound, and can be powerful tools for growing a company or establishing a brand. Executed properly, the optimized press release can open doors that no business owner can afford to ignore.

graphical elements not only creates interest but also grows traffic when using captions and naming pictures in a keyword-friendly convention. In addition, adding keywords to anchor text links, along with embedding audio and/or video features in releases is helpful. Understand that the optimized release doubles as a Web page. “In fact,” adds Sharon Dotson, president of Bayou City PR, “companies with no budget for a website can still get top search engine placement with an optimized online press release.”

The Big Picture

Make the Commitment

While SEO press releases are written to be ranked by search engines, people must be able to understand them, warns Mickie Kennedy, president and founder of eReleases.com and SEOPressRelease.com. Thus, respect your audience and always present your business professionally. If you get 10,000 search engine visitors to view an optimized press release that reads like a search engine tactic, you will damage your business’ credibility. Creating an effective optimized release requires an understanding of public relations writing and the ability to enhance it with SEO-specific keywords. An online PR professional can provide these services as well as managing the distribution and any other facets of your campaign, or you may choose to try parts of the process yourself. Be advised, though, that poorly managed publicity is not necessarily better than no publicity at all. Optimization techniques include adding technical elements to your website and seasoning the copy with keywords. Including photos and other

Before looking for help in writing and distributing the release, define the intended goal and determine how to measure success. Developing a public relations strategy will depend on the quality of content and your dedication to PR efforts. An effective public relations campaign requires a schedule for press release distribution, an evaluation process and then adjusting the messages accordingly. According to Kennedy, a company will generally see a return when submitting quality content and committing to four or more releases annually. “Services such as ours,” says Michael Schwartz, CEO of WebWire, “offer low pricing to encourage multiple submissions of similar press releases containing consistent messages that are packaged differently. For example, many customers participated in the Haiti relief efforts by submitting releases. It was an effective coat-tail technique to get into readers’ consciousness.” To achieve the best results, adds Schwartz, press releases should be submitted before Wednesday of

MAY 2010

the traditional business week. When distributing releases later in the week, WebWire offers a “sponsored link” product called WebRelease that provides ranking with Google and/or Yahoo! search early the following week.

Ask the Right Questions When shopping for a marketing or public relations firm to create optimized press releases for your business, experts agree that writing samples are the best way to judge prospects. “Every PR or marketing firm will share winning results and testimonials,” explains Kennedy. “If a firm has 500 clients and 20 get real results, you see the problem that anecdotal results and testimonials will provide. The perception created is that the company does a great job while the reality is that 96 percent of its clients don’t achieve great results.” Read sample releases created for actual clients to ensure a balance of keyword optimization and readability. Stewart also suggests asking the following questions: • Does your price include keyword research? • What is the fee for writing, and is there a separate fee for online distribution? • Is there an additional fee for sending the release to targeted media outlets and bloggers? • How many revisions does the price include? • What’s your turnaround time? • What clients have hired you to write press releases and what are their phone numbers? • Can you tell me about success stories those clients have had as a result of releases you wrote for them? (If they tell you, call those clients yourself and ask for a reference. Were they satisfied with the release? If not, why not? If yes, what happened as a result of the release?) • What is the fee? (Most reliable services charge $150 and higher for writing a press release.)

Reap the Rewards Well-written releases offer many advantages, from attracting a wider variety of audiences to improving search rankings. Writing informational copy rather than promotional content, for instance, will attract both journalists and consumers. In addition, optimized press releases will stay online forever, continuously pulling traffic and providing leads when employing the right keywords to attract the right target audience. “An optimized release goes directly to the target audience,” says Dotson. “End users obtain relevant information without

the filter of traditional print and electronic media. In addition, the optimized release will help build a website’s page rank and relevance. Search engine ranking improves since these optimized press releases link back to a company’s website due to relevant keywords strategically embedded in the copy.” Therefore, Stewart adds, it is wise to create variations of the same release by altering the keywords to attract multiple audiences. Each release, then, will achieve better rankings for each search phrase rather than using a single release that targets everyone. “And to achieve maximum return on investment,” she says, “remember to add a clear call to action telling readers what to do next — visit a website, call a telephone number, send an E-mail, look at a catalog, go to a sales page or request a free sample.”

What to Watch Out For There used to be a vetting process by the media, says Kennedy, but today the decision-makers are the users who have access to and can scrutinize an overabundance of information. Hence, it’s easier than ever to make your information available, but more competitive than ever to win over an audience. Very little distinguishes your information from everything else available online. Distorted traffic statistics can pose another obstacle. Many free services heavily stream RSS feeds that automatically create “hits” when RSS readers update their feeds. Therefore, the number of hits from people perusing releases is generally lower than the value reported. Another challenge includes the anecdotal or temporary impact on search engine rankings resulting from backlinks to your website from the press release provider’s website. Kennedy advises that most SEO firms find these results only last about two weeks. Another hurdle can be avoided by using specific, long-tail keyword phrases such as “black patent-leather pumps” when trying to achieve page-one search engine rankings, instead of using highly competitive, short-tail phrases such as “women’s shoes.” When optimized press releases are well-written and provide quality content, they can be a very powerful vehicle for any company. Even a sole proprietorship can look like a big business by leveraging optimized press releases correctly. Although there are no guarantees, writing and submitting an optimized press release can create new, long-lasting opportunities for your business. Michelle M. Wicmandy is the Director of Marketing for Southeast Media, a marketing communications firm, and specializes in mobile and e-mail marketing.

MAY 2010

Holistic Web Site Development and Promotion

holistic: “Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts.” (Dictionary.com)

Times have changed. The Internet is incredibly competitive, and the environment in which businesses compete online is changing at a rapid pace. Yet many business’ website development processes remain unchanged from the turn of the century. To achieve Web visibility in the current environment, the website development and promotion life cycle must evolve and begin using a more holistic approach. Why a Holistic Approach is Necessary Consider the following list of disciplines and respective professionals required to develop and promote a website in today’s competitive landscape: Web Design / Development: • Graphic Designers to create a visually appealing website. • Programmers to ensure that various design and process elements work together. • Web usability experts to ensure site visitors are able to complete tasks intuitively. • Conversion optimization specialists to ensure maximum conversion potential by website visitors. Content Developers: • Writers and copywriters to develop content. • Photographers and graphic designers to create appealing visual content. • Audio and video content developers due to the increasing popularity of podcasts and online videos. Website Marketing: • Search Engine Optimization professionals to improve the website’s visibility in organic search results. • Search Engine Marketers to implement and manage pay-per-click and other online advertising channels. • Social Media Professionals to leverage the power of social networks, community sites and other social media tools.

MAY 2010

By Pete Hollier

And, of course, we cannot leave out the primary stakeholders of the project — the business owners and management team, including the marketing department and public relations professionals. It is this collection of various professionals and the different skill sets they possess that calls for a holistic approach to website development and promotion. But there’s more. Each and every one of these stakeholders has specific needs and requirements that must be supported by the website. Absolutely none of these requirements are individual entities that do not in some way require the support of other website design or development elements, or impact these design and development elements themselves. This is where the transition to a holistic approach becomes so important. The integration of all these various needs and requirements into the website requires the individual elements to support each other, for the common good of the entire business.

Implementing the Holistic Approach The implementation of a holistic Web development and promotion project is no different than any other business initiative. A clear understanding of the business’ objectives is the primary prerequisite. Once objectives have been determined, establishing the budget for the new or redesigned website is the next

Online Collaboration Tools Holistic website development requires that everybody be on the same page. Below are five tools to help your businesses collaborate.

priority. In many cases, due to budgeting constraints, it is at this stage of the process that prioritization of business objectives becomes necessary. By this stage, your business should have a clear understanding of why the project is to be implemented, what is to be achieved and how much the company can afford to make the project a reality.

Effective Project Management is the Key The holistic approach requires strong project management skills due to the extensive number of professional disciplines required to complete the project. The first task the project manager will be required to complete is the identification of the development and promotion team members. Team development must be prioritized. The primary principle of a holistic approach is the identification of what website elements are required to support the needs of the various promotional efforts to ensure the site is both highly visible on the Web and able to fulfill the business’ and website visitors’ needs. This may appear to be common sense. However, in my experience, this is often not the process that is taking place. All too often, the website goes live prematurely. Only then is the question is asked, “How are we going to promote this website?” This scenario often creates the need for website revisions following the perceived completion of the project — a waste of both time and resources. Determining Team Requirements Once the development and promotion teams have been determined, team members must identify the strategies they plan on implementing within their areas of expertise. Team members must effectively communicate these plans and outline their future requirements to ensure that allowances are made for the inclusion of their proposed strategies in the website’s development stage. The communication of future strategies is critical, and one of the most overlooked steps in the website’s development life cycle. This is the primary reason websites often need revisions after they have gone live. It not only creates additional costs to the project, but is also likely to have a detrimental effect on the website’s performance. When businesses are faced with a website that underperforms, the situation often snowballs out of control — by this stage having spent the budgeted sum and received little or no ROI. This usually creates the situation where business managers are resistant to spending additional resources on a website that has failed to perform to expectations. Yet, if the additional resources are not found to complete the necessary revisions, the site will never be able to achieve the business’ goals and objectives.

Google Apps Marketplace: Recently released, Google Apps features tools for accounting and finance, calendar and scheduling, productivity and project management, to name just a few. Along with Google Buzz, these apps could make for easy collaboration. Developers are working hard, so expect many more apps in the near future. 37signals: One of the early entries into the collaboration market, 37signals has a suite of tools designed to help businesses be more productive and efficient. Their popular Basecamp offering helps manage projects between coworkers and clients. Highrise tracks contacts and leads; Campfire offers real-time chat and file sharing, and there’s even an API for ultimate customization. MindMeister: Brainstorming is the focus here, by creating collaborative, online mind maps. In addition to the online offering, mind maps can be updated and viewed through an iPhone app, E-mail and SMS, and even offline. MindMeister has won several awards for their service. Dimdim: Host and attend live meetings where users can give presentations, share Web pages and desktops, chat with webcams, and more. Meetings can also be recorded for later reference. Dimdim is in competition with standards like GoToMeeting and Webex, but happens to be free for small meetings and very reasonable for larger ones. Get Satisfaction: A client-facing tool, Get Satisfaction lets businesses build communities around customer service. Solicit feedback, support customers and help them support each other. A solution like Get Satisfaction is a good way to control the conversation around your brand — which can be difficult in a social media world. — WM Staff

A Holistic Philosophy Summary The holistic approach to the website development and promotion life cycle is really nothing more than common sense. The reason why a holistic methodology has become so important is the increasingly complex nature of the business website. Gone are the days of the simple brochure website. Businesses and site visitors have high expectations of what every online presence should deliver. Ensuring that a website is capable of meeting these expectations requires the implementation of a holistic approach to manage the multitude of website development and promotional requirements. In 2001, Pete Hollier started an e-commerce consultancy service assisting New Zealand businesses to leverage the power of the Internet. The services evolved to include Search Engine Optimization in 2003. Pete returned to Canada, and in 2008 started SeoWizardry.ca to offer Search Engine Optimization and other website performance enhancing services.

MAY 2010

Managing

Website Redesigns By Peter Prestipino, Editor-in-Chief and Mike Phillips, Senior Editor

If the website you own or manage is not meeting expectations, it is time to consider engaging in a comprehensive redesign process. While the notion of undertaking a project of this magnitude can seem overwhelming, doing some benchmarking and research, reviewing website analytics and performance metrics, and aligning that information with your objectives will make the redesign process much less cumbersome and result in a more polished, more effective final product.

While it’s not uncommon to grow tired of how a website looks, a more logical reason to take on a redesign project is that the site is not meeting its objectives. The number or amount of sales and leads generated is a solid indicator of site performance but there are others. Is time spent on site noticeably low? This might be an indication that the wrong visual impression is being given to users. Are you receiving feedback about users’ inability to locate specific content items? A website’s user-friendliness is a catalyst for overall performance — so inaccessibility is also a logical reason to take on a website redesign. Search engine friendliness (more on that later) is also a common reason for redesigning a website and is frequently the reason most sites start the process at all. A formal redesign process will include a sufficient amount of audience research, taking into account an organization’s on-site marketing objectives, developing a wireframe, and establishing a fixed framework from which design elements can be applied and implemented in the future.

Audience Research and Benchmarking While website analytics can tell us a great deal about how a site is performing now (and where improvements can be made), it often falls short when it comes to acquiring qualitative (not quantitative) data — the information that machines alone can’t pick up on. Human-powered solutions like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk can

MAY 2010

help gather actionable insights into users’ visual impressions of a website, the accessibility of any particular content item, or any other defined criteria. Survey software solutions are also valuable resources for acquiring existing user opinions about possible site improvements. Take it a step further by leveraging services like uTest, a company providing professional-level software testing services to identify what is working and what is not, in relation to your Web, mobile or desktop applications.

Formalizing Marketing Objectives A website might be the face of your brand online but it is also the marketing engine. Getting a handle on what you and others within your enterprise expect from the site will aid in charting a course toward creating a final product that meets the needs of everyone and everything — including the bottom line. For example, conducting interviews with the sales and customer service departments might reveal a need for easier access to pricing or support information. The business development team could request that contact and lead forms be prominent throughout the site and connected directly to a CRM platform. Discussions with C-level executives might reveal that press kits, investor information and founder biographies are essential. As you can see, there are many marketing objectives so taking all of them into account at the outset will ensure a final product everyone is excited to support.

There are also some important considerations to make related to search engine optimization (SEO) that must be addressed during a formal website redesign. For many companies, SEO tends to be an afterthought and not included in the initial planning stages of a website redesign. At the very least, one should consider implementing a prioritized site architecture and a focus on ease of navigation. Making sure that: • pages receiving traffic are placed higher to the root URL in your site hierarchy • a sufficient number of pages are cross- or inter-linked • top-level pages and pages aggressively being optimized are focused on conversion • navigational menus for users are visible to search engines — through CSS or by having a text-based navigation menu in the footer of the page and on a sitemap • the use of 301 redirects (should the structure of a site change dramatically) is managed and monitored closely

“Doing” the Redesign Before handing over audience research and marketing objectives to your Web designer, it is important to take into account whether this is really just a redesign (i.e. a freshen-up) or if an entirely new software platform will be integrated. Should it be the latter, understanding the features and limitations of the selected solution and asking designers and developers for recommendations and guidance will prove to be extremely useful. For example, if you are deploying a new content management system (CMS), ask for input from your Web designer about the level of complexity in relation to creating new design themes and templates, or quiz the developer about challenges integrating new modules. The next step in redesigning is often where most Web professionals immediately jump — the layout and wireframing. Only when you are armed with a sufficient amount of benchmarking insights and elements necessary to satisfy marketing objectives should you start working with wireframes and layouts. Web-based diagram tools like Gliffy can help layout the structure of a website and ensure that all the “pieces of the puzzle” are present before moving on to actual site wireframing. Some of the most popular wireframing tools include Mockingbird (gomockingbird.com), HotGloo (hello.hotgloo.com), MockFlow (mockflow.com), and a personal favorite in Pencil (evolus.vn/pencil/), a free add-on for Firefox. Completely redesigning a website every few years might seem like a daunting task. But stay-

We spoke with Pinckney Hugo Group’s Executive Vice President Aaron Hugo and Senior Interactive Designer Adam Jwaskiewics to get their opinions on website redesign — the criteria, processes and objectives. Pinckney Hugo Group is a full-service marketing firm that offers traditional services such as print, radio and television, as well as interactive services. WM: How long, typically, is it until a redesign is needed?

where a client showed us analytics and gave us direction to a redesign. It's one of the first things we want to ask them — what’s most needed?

AH: If something has changed in the brand, if there's new positioning or a new message; that usually forces a Web redesign. But in a lot of cases it's every three years, depending on the industry.

Aaron Hugo

Adam Jwaskiewics

AJ: A lot of times clients are too close to their products or services. They overcomplicate things. A client needs to take a step back, and that's a good reason to hire an agency.

AJ: If you’re not doing a little each day or each month, you’re falling behind quickly.

WM: What are the most-needed redesign elements of a website? AH: Right now, over the past year-plus, it’s complete redesigns. What we're really seeing is clients asking us to help lead them through a navigation planning process. It's about really understanding the way a customer would logically go through their site. What are the most important functions and features of their site? AJ: The nature in which people use websites has changed in the last 10 years, such as social media aspects, sharing, and posting.

WM: When contracting a redesign, what questions should a client ask? AH: A lot has to do with how flexible a company is. How well will you hold my hand through this process? If we need to make changes in the end, if we need to relearn something, will you be there to help us? Halfway through the process, if we need to change, how well can that be accommodated, and is there an upcharge? AJ: I believe a client should be able to ask their partner to lead them through the process. Garbage-in-garbage-out needs to be eliminated.

With most clients that we're seeing, they realize design is more than a pretty picture on a home page. People are really using the Web differently. So, clients understand a lot of planning has to happen before developing.

WM: Is design more important than ever?

WM: What are some common redesign mistakes?

AH: It’s your window to the world. There are so many ways now to get in front of your audience. It’s mission critical.

AH: Everybody reads just enough to be dangerous. They're reading about FLASH, color theory, whatever. They don't truly do the planning in the beginning. We've never walked into a meeting

AJ: It’s important to note that advertising has moved online, too. As more budget and advertising becomes interactive, you need your pages to look as professional as possible.

ing fresh in the eyes of your users and relevant to the employees that support your business is imperative. Understanding how all users (consumers and employees) use the site, how your site’s competitors stack up, understanding the underlying but required marketing objectives and getting started with the redesign with a layout and wireframing session will prove to shorten design and development time and ensure that your newly redesigned website make a difference to your company.

MAY 2010

Pricing Web Hosting

By Linc Wonham, Associate Editor

With today’s emerging technologies and the increasing demand for a wider range of services, the Web hosting landscape has exploded into an array of complex, specialized categories. “The Web hosting industry has always been driven by evolving customer needs and advances in technology,” says Reed Caldwell, founder and CEO of ServInt, a managed hosting provider that’s experienced its own evolution during 15 years of service. “As modern Web content has become woven into the fabric of our daily lives, the hosting industry has adapted to better meet customers’ high expectations for uptime, performance, managed services, security Compare Costs and social responsibility.” Begin cost comparisons by Which is all good news for anyone shopping for a Web host in today’s heavily determining your bandwidth tilted buyer’ s market. Whether you are in and storage requirements. the development stages of a one-person There are numerous online startup or you have enjoyed a successful resources to help you determine Web presence for decades, it never hurts to your needs, and one of the more take a quick refresher course in the current costs of Web hosting. detailed sites can be found at Shared hosting is the most affordable www.numion.com/calculators. and most popular option, and today’s fees start at just a few dollars per month. The upside is that you’ll receive unlimited bandwidth and storage space for little money. The downside is that you’ll be sharing a server with others — creating the potential for security issues or lapses in performance. But millions of satisfied customers share their Web hosting services, and there are a staggering amount of reputable, professional companies from which to choose. There are also dozens of shared Web hosting review sites, and one of the most helpful and informative is www.alreadyhosting.com. “The shared hosting industry is to a point now that companies are just about at the break-even threshold and most of

their money comes from upsells,” says Josh Ewin of Dedicated Now, a 12-year-old managed dedicated server company. “The reseller business has grown so much over the past few years and there are so many Mom and Pop companies that providers are realizing they have to offer customers more than just low prices.” Some shared hosts will offer dedicated IPs and private SSLs for added security, nudging the monthly fee past the $10 mark and into the $12-$15 range. If you’re still not comfortable with the shared-server concept at that price, consider dedicated and managed hosting, where the host supplies a dedicated server of which the customer has exclusive use. Dedicated monthly fees can start as low as $59 per month, but they average closer to $250-$300 and can top out just above four figures, depending on the robustness of the network, the quality of the hardware and the range of services provided. “You have to look at web hosting as a service the same way you view transportation as a service,” says Ewin. “There are different price structures for different vehicles, and you can expect to pay much less to ride in a Geo than you would in a Bentley. In the last 18 months or so, companies are really realizing the value of adding in significant management services.” Yet another option that falls between shared server hosting and dedicated or managed hosting is Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting. This is a form of shared hosting that allows website operators more control over hardware, software and access through a private area on the server used only by them. This is a logical and popular way to transition into dedicated and shared hosting for a more affordable cost of about $50 to $150 per month, again depending on bandwidth and storage requirements.

Hosting Provider

Cost of Basic Plan

Basic Plan Features

Cost of Other Plans (RANGE)

Features of Other Plans

1&1

$3.99/mo. Beginner plan

$4.99/mo. to $19.99/mo.

Verio

$9.95/mo. Basic plan

aPlus

$4.98/mo. Business plan

Hostway

$13.95/mo. Starter plan

GoDaddy

$4.99/mo. Economy plan

10 GB space, Unlimited monthly transfer, 600 E-mail accounts Unlimited space, 6 TB transfer, 100 E-mail 200 GB space, 2,000 GB transfer, 250 E-mail 100 GB space, Unlimited transfer, 500 E-mail 10 GB space, 300 GB transfer, 100 E-mail

300 GB space, Unlimited transfer, 4,000 E-mail Unlimited space, 12 TB transfer, 500 E-mail 500 GB space, 5,000 GB transfer, Unlimited E-mail 500 GB space, Unlimited transfer, 3,000 E-mail Unlimited space, Unlimited transfer, 1,000 E-mail

MAY 2010

$19.95/mo. to $29.95/mo. $5.95/mo. to $34.95/mo. $19.95/mo. to $89.95/mo. $6.99/mo. to $14.99/mo.

Website Magazine

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Website Magazine

MORE RESOURCES TO SPEED YOUR WEB SUCCESS

Website Magazine Success Corner Throughout each month, the editors at Website Magazine report on best practices to provide readers with the framework they need to succeed online. Here are five recent articles you might have missed at WebsiteMagazine.com Three jQuery Plugins for Google Maps Lovers The most talked about word on the Web today is “location”, and smart developers and designers are exploring new ways to present information to users in this context. In other words, there’s never been a better time to integrate maps and other location-based services into your website, if you haven’t done so already. To help you along in this process, the editors at Website Magazine recommend three very easy-to-deploy but extremely useful jQuery Plugins. http://bit.ly/cDwlWZ 25 Must-have IE Add-ons for Web Professionals Our weblog post entitled 23 Chrome Extensions for Web Professionals was such a hit with readers that we decided to do the same (plus two more) for Internet Explorer. We compiled a list of IE browser add-ons that we deemed the most useful for Web professionals in any industry. Whether your focus at the moment is on blogging, SEO, social sharing, bookmarking or some combination of all of the above, chances are we found something that will pique your interest or is at the very least worth checking out. http://bit.ly/af7HWs Wordpress Shopping Pages Might Blow Your Mind We were collectively blown away to discover how simple it is to add a new source of revenue to your site with the help of the new Wordpress affiliate plugin, WP Shopping Pages. Don’t need any extra cash coming in? Then feel free to skip this one. But if the thought of creating a low-maintenance revenue stream with an “affiliate store” displaying products from Amazon and eBay appeals even slightly, see what we had to say about the new $69 plugin from Wordpress. http://bit.ly/cD9v09 Tired of Tweeting? Online Forums May Be the Answer A recent Forrester Research report indicated that 28 percent of U.S. consumers read online forums, which makes forums the second most popular online destination behind only video. But with all of the talk today about businesses trying to ride the crest of the phenomenal social media wave, it seems that forums are rarely mentioned. There’s clearly an opportunity being missed by many, and one company went so far as to say that forums are the secret location of “the Holy Grail of marketing.” Reading this article may be the first step on the path to that location, and to learning how to best utilize this valuable but underused resource. http://bit.ly/cEJVJO Consumers Trust Advertising on Local Newspaper Websites A recent study by comScore provided good news for the struggling newspaper industry but even better news for online advertisers. More than one-third of the consumers who responded to the survey said that local newspapers were their most trustworthy source of advertising, ahead of local television websites and online portals. Take a look at the complete results of the report and what they have to say about the current and future state of online advertising. http://bit.ly/91woxv

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Visit Website Magazine’s May 2010 Advertisers • 1&1 (www.1and1.com) • 7Search.com (www.7Search.com) • pubMarketplace.com (www.pubMarketplace.com) • Aplus.net (www.Aplus.net) • Bold Software (www.BoldSoft.com) • Conversion Conference (www.ConversionConference.com) • DataTree ListFusion (www.DataTree.Listfusion.com/grow) • iContact (www.iContact.com) • Internet Supervision (www.InternetSupervision.com • Market Motive (www.WebsiteMagazine.com/MarketMotive) • Premium Web Cart (www.PremiumWebCart.com) • University of San Francisco Online (www.USanFranOnline.com) • ValidatedSite.com (www.ValidatedSite.com) • YesMail (www.YesMail.com)

MAY 2010

CHECK OUT NEXT-GENERATION SOURCES ON DISPLAY AT WEB 2.0 EXPO

7Search.com, Inc. www.7search.com Pay-per-click search engine for advertisers and affiliates

Web 2.0 Expo hosts companies building the next-generation Web – tools, technologies, services, and infrastructures. If you’re in San Francisco, May 3-6, be sure to visit Website Magazine’s booth for a chance to win an iPhone.

80legs | www.80legs.com Crawl and process web content with over 50,000 computers

Microsoft | www.microsoft.com/silverlight Silverlight plug-in helps design and development of Web apps

Adobe Systems | www.adobe.com Software to produce and deliver engaging content

MOMO | www.imomou.com Web-based instant messaging platform via desktop or smartphone

Atlassian Software | www.atlassian.com Solutions for enterprises to collaborate better

Navigators Software | www.navsoft.in Providing the full spectrum of Web 2.0 services

Authorize.Net | www.authorize.net Payment gateway for merchants, resellers and developers

Neosoft Technologies | www.neosofttech.com Providing software development and IT services

Avonsys | www.avonsys.com Outsourcing solutions and services for web-enabled businesses blueKiwi | www.bluekiwi.net Teaching companies to engage the collective voices of the Web

Askyourtargetmarket.com www.askyourtargetmarket.com Self-service Internet survey software to conduct targeted market research.

Cazoodle | www.cazoodle.com Semantic data-aware search for building vertical search services Effective UI | www.effectiveui.com Designers and developers focusing on user-friendly apps GazoPa | www.gazopa.com Image search engine supports both photos and video thumbnails GoGrid | www.gogrid.com Cloud infrastructure hosting provider of “Control in the Cloud” Hippo | www.onehippo.com Flexible, robust content management and portal technologies

Compendium Blogware www.compendium.com Innovative Web-based blogging platform

HP | www.hp.com New ideas for simpler, more valuable experiences with technology IBM | www-01.ibm.com/software/info/web20/ Enabling better business results through Web 2.0 technologies INetU | www.inetu.net Managed hosting provider supporting Web applications and more

iContact www.icontact.com Leading email marketing services for small business and non-profits

Infragistics | www.infragistics.com Empowering developers to create UIs for new killer apps iPlotz | www.iplotz.com Clickable, navigable mockups and wireframes for prototype websites Meetup | www.meetup.com World-wide network of self-organized community groups

46 |

.com |

M AY 2010

Neustar | www.neustar.biz Internet infrastructure services and support, including webmetrics OpenSRS | www.opensrs.com Provisioning and management of domains, SSLs and email OpenText | www.opentext.com Enterprise Content Management to enable Web 2.0 initiatives The Planet | www.theplanet.com On-demand IT infrastructure solutions for SMBs and websites Rhomobile | www.rhomobile.com Open-source framework for smartphone app developers SOASTA | www.soasta.com Capturing website data and turning it into actionable information Socialtext | www.socialtext.com Applying Web 2.0 solutions to critical business challenges SoftLayer | www.softlayer.com On-demand data center and hosting to empower enterprises Symplified | www.simplified.com Securing the Cloud and SaaS applications with SinglePoint Tableau Software | www.tableausoftware.com Browser-based analytics and data visualization Talentica | www.talentica.com Offshore product development on build-operate transfer model TechSmith | www.techsmith.com Screen capture and recording software for multimedia Topix | www.topix.com Linking 50,000 news sources to user-generated forums and pages XBOSoft | www.xbosoft.com Full-service software and application testing company

Website Magazine

Marketplace

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M AY 2010

.com | 47

W E B C O M M E N TA R Y

With Peter Prestipino, Editor-in-Chief

Is Your Website a

House of Cards? On Inspiration & Innovation It’s a commonly held notion that most small businesses fail within the first few years of their existence. The Small Business Administration reports that just 66 percent last past the first two years — but that does not tell the whole story. There is no benefit to discussing the percentage of enterprises that do not make it if we never address the ways to prevent a failure from happening. From lack of experience to insufficient capital, there is a long list of reasons for small business failure. On the World Wide Web, however, you can be certain that the percentage of failure is far higher — thanks to a lower cost of “entry” than traditional offline businesses. A belief has somehow been established (however wrongly) that anyone can be successful on the Web. The reality is far different. But the true reasons for online success will open a whole new world of possibilities.

Membership has its Rewards, Ownership Offers Riches As you have probably discovered in your career as a Web professional, it is uncommon to achieve genuine success (let’s define it as wealth and/or notoriety) by building a website or service that essentially mimics, is identical in nature, or that ultimately supports or is reliant on another business entirely. We have all seen “clone” websites launch to much fanfare, only to ultimately fade away once users realize there is no significant improvement upon the original. Simply put, there is more value in owning a technology than leveraging someone else’s solution. This is where many of us fall short in the pursuit of success. Take a look at leaders in your industry to see this in action. Would Amazon be an e-commerce leader if it were not for its expertise in product recommendation technology? Would Google be a leader in advertising if it didn’t have a mastery of natural search? It is the technology that truly differentiates us from the competition, creates opportunity for new business and offers value to end-users. However, instead of focusing on innovation in new opportunities and developing unique solutions to existing challenges the

MAY 2010

majority of Web professionals take technology shortcuts and focus instead on “borrowing” inspiration from others. There is clearly some merit and value in doing so, but the result more often than not is that hundreds of second-rate technology clones flood the market behind one industry leader and hundreds of other followers and hangers-on down the line. The problem of being a follower or member of someone else’s community is that your success is, in part, reliant on the success of others. You could have a huge audience and the most impressive user interface ever developed, but what happens when the API you are using to support that service closes up shop? Is your entire business model reliant on the performance of another? If yes, you have a significant problem on your hands. Your website is, in no uncertain terms, is a house of cards. It could collapse at any moment. The unfair truth is that too often websites generate the attention of others based not on what has been created or provided, but rather who has built it and who is using it. When you have both a unique technology and an audience of some worth, however, you are on your way to achieving long-term success. To get there you need a technology — but not just any. You need your own. The point is, when you take on substantially more risk by investing in your own technology solution, it carries the potential for far greater reward than any piggy-backed model of business. If you had your choice between spending $1,000 on a website that mirrored or supported the features of another, or $5,000 for a unique Web application that you owned outright, which would you choose? That might depend greatly on a variety of factors. But count on the fact there will be greater rewards should you choose the path of innovation, and not inspiration alone.

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