Social Networking and Web 2.0

Filed under: Google, Social Software

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. In this case, the “them” is Facebook. Microsoft joined them. Google wants to beat them.

Tomorrow, Google will launch its new social networking API, called OpenSocial, with a host of high-value social networking players already at the party. The most significant of these players are LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Orkut, who’ve all been around quite a while and have substantial vertical popularity: LinkedIn in the business work, Salesforce in CRM applications, and Orkut as a South-American MySpace-killer. Even Friendster, which has become a sort-of also-ran with a great brand name, has joined the party. Perhaps these relatively peripheral social nets see Google as their ticket to competing with MySpace and Facebook.

Like Facebook, Google’s API will provide participants with options for dealing with user profiles and events. But unlike Facebook, OpenSocial will really on commonplace JavaScript to do the API’s bidding. Facebook uses it’s own “FBML” specification, which means it can’t be used off of the Facebook system. Google’s intention is to get as many third-party social nets supporting OpenSocial as possible. And developers will flock to anything that saves them from having to re-develop their widgets for a dozen different social nets.
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No, I'm not talking about car engines - so let's forget about them for a moment. I mean shopping engines.

Shopping season is here once again. As you observe a good number of online retailers have maxed out paid search campaigns, raised ad media buys, and drive SEO folks bloody busy. But to boost incremental sales volume, these retailers should look no further than the major shopping engines.

At present, the three biggest players include: eBay's Shopping.com, Scripps' Shopzilla, and Experian's PriceGrabber. How big has online shopping become? In the recent Hitwise study, it was found that 10% or more of all traffic on major search engines is sent to shopping property.

The burgeoning online shopping industry was backed by 2 compelling forces: the vertical creep and the vertical listings. The latter is shown at the top of organic Search Engine results and below top sponsored listings. They are also shown by shopping engines using aggressive SEO and SEM techniques.

What does this means? Marketers and shoppers should be clever in riding the hype. The advantages are numerous. But the drawbacks are just as overwhelming.

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No, I'm not talking about car engines - so let's forget about them for a moment. I mean shopping engines.

Shopping season is here once again. As you observe a good number of online retailers have maxed out paid search campaigns, raised ad media buys, and drive SEO folks bloody busy. But to boost incremental sales volume, these retailers should look no further than the major shopping engines.

At present, the three biggest players include: eBay's Shopping.com, Scripps' Shopzilla, and Experian's PriceGrabber. How big has online shopping become? In the recent Hitwise study, it was found that 10% or more of all traffic on major search engines is sent to shopping property.

The burgeoning online shopping industry was backed by 2 compelling forces: the vertical creep and the vertical listings. The latter is shown at the top of organic Search Engine results and below top sponsored listings. They are also shown by shopping engines using aggressive SEO and SEM techniques.

What does this means? Marketers and shoppers should be clever in riding the hype. The advantages are numerous. But the drawbacks are just as overwhelming.

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Everybody is talking about the essence of SEO. And there's no denying it, SEO is really important. Without SEO, your website is likely to have poor traffic. And without relevant traffic, your site will end up in the dumps.

But I think you will agree with me that SEO is not enough. It is important to realize that driving traffic to your website isn't the ultimate goal; it's just the means to achieve the end. Whether it is building relationship with customers or improving sales, the fact is precise strategy is necessary.

Statistics shows that even on top websites, 95% of visitors don't buy anything on their first visit. If you can't produce leads from those visits, it means: great traffic but futile.

To remedy such doldrums, I get the email addresses of the as many visitors and offer them something valuable but won't cost me much or anything at all. Useful information is one. It may come in a form of release, trivia or tips.

The thing is to boost lead generation systems. As such, start a worthy relationship with your visitors. You can send useful information every 3-5 days. This is to build confidence and trust. Finally, make a sales pitch: give them a discounted offer for a limited period of time and you will see your sales numbers going up.

Your business success on the internet depends on an integrated approach; not just on SEO. Start with web Search Engine Optimization and then use all the weapons in your online marketing arsenal!

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Everybody is talking about the essence of SEO. And there's no denying it, SEO is really important. Without SEO, your website is likely to have poor traffic. And without relevant traffic, your site will end up in the dumps.

But I think you will agree with me that SEO is not enough. It is important to realize that driving traffic to your website isn't the ultimate goal; it's just the means to achieve the end. Whether it is building relationship with customers or improving sales, the fact is precise strategy is necessary.

Statistics shows that even on top websites, 95% of visitors don't buy anything on their first visit. If you can't produce leads from those visits, it means: great traffic but futile.

To remedy such doldrums, I get the email addresses of the as many visitors and offer them something valuable but won't cost me much or anything at all. Useful information is one. It may come in a form of release, trivia or tips.

The thing is to boost lead generation systems. As such, start a worthy relationship with your visitors. You can send useful information every 3-5 days. This is to build confidence and trust. Finally, make a sales pitch: give them a discounted offer for a limited period of time and you will see your sales numbers going up.

Your business success on the internet depends on an integrated approach; not just on SEO. Start with web Search Engine Optimization and then use all the weapons in your online marketing arsenal!

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A while back there was quite a bit of scare mongering going around the SEO industry about how Reciprocal Links were dead. No, reciprocal links are not dead and now I have the proof.

Filed under: Internet, Features, Blogging, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

If you only read one website every day, it’s probably not too difficult to keep on the conversation around various posts. Just leave a comment with your two cents and keep checking back to see if anyone’s responded. Some sites will even let you subscribe to blog comments by e-mail.

But if you read and comment on dozens or hundreds of blogs on a regular basis, this can get a bit tedious. A few months ago we reported on Intense Debate, a new startup that tackles this problem by providing a unified commenting platform. Sign up for an account, and you can easily track all of your conversations on various blogs. You can even syndicate your blog comments as an RSS feed.

Now it looks like Intense Debate has some competition from Disqus, a company launching a similar service today. Like Intense Debate, Disqus has several components. Web publishers can incorporate Disqus into their blog or website to offer advanced commenting features like threading and avatars. And users can create profiles to track their comments across various sites.

Continue reading Manage blog comments with Disqus

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Filed under: Audio, Design, Developer, Fun, Internet, Web services, P2P, Social Software, web 2.0

Meebo has just announced a new platform for their messaging system. This allows for third party developers to create applications based on the growing chat service.

The Meebo development platform launched with a set of API’s that developers can grab in order to create multi user applications that Meebo users can specifically use to connect with each other. The question users must answer before the build, “I want to ______ with you. Before development begins, Meebo requires applications to be registered complete with title of application, descriptions and author’s names. Special instructions and a key will then be sent out to get connected to the database. When the build is complete using either the supplied Flash or JavaScript starter files, applications will be tested in a sandbox environment before they are released to Meebo users. Developers aren’t left in the shadows, Meebo will be selling advertising on the applications, and will be splitting revenue 50/50.

The two year old company is moving into the big time fast with their communication platform. They have also announced some big partnerships that allow video/audio calls (TokBox), voice chat (Pudding Media), group calling (TalkShoe), and live TV show streaming (UStream).
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So you are a novice. And just the thought of entering into the SEO realm make you shiver, right? Oopps. It won't be for long. If you are guided by essential SEO tips for novice, hesitation won't pull you down - that I can assure.

Here are some things to remember:

1. Always own your domain name
2. Host your site on a dependable server
3. Spend time selecting your keywords and phrase
4. Keep your titles to 55 characters or less
5. Use your page names cleverly
6. Be creative with page content when incorporating SEO keywords
7. Follow Search Engine guidelines
8. Don't use doorway pages. If such is indispensable, use your robot.txt file to limit access to all but the main page
9. Do not cloak unless absolutely required
10. Don't spam
11. You have to have a robots.txt tag
12. Try to keep each page under 100k
13. Make use of the bottom of the page by having menus as text Links
14. Upload robots.txt file to your root directory
15. Create a sitemap.xml file and upload to your root directory file
16. Don't use link buttons or js Links - use text links
17. If you must use js, put it in an external file
18. Use CSS in lieu of color, size, font tags
19. Have a 404 page
20. Submit site to Yahoo Directory and ODP

Basically, web Search Engine Optimization is doing the right thing. So never jeopardize your site by using “black hat” techniques. Just give the search engines and your visitors what they want - that simple!

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Yahoo Site Explorer has shown different counts for registered and non-registered users.

Earlier, seoroundtable.com divulged Yahoo reported its site to have 14,999 pages indexed in Yahoo and a total of 57,146 inlinks to the homepage from all pages. But using a registered account, Yahoo reports seroundtable.com to have 15,556 pages and a total of 216,880 inlinks to the homepage from all pages.

Obviously, there's a huge discrepancy between 57,146 and 216,880 inlinks. To respond to the grievance, Yahoo said:

Recently, some of you noticed changes in counts for Site Explorer results, where the counts were different for logged-in users versus logged-out users.

While the counts have been incorrect in some cases, the actual returned results have been correct. However, we did roll out a product fix yesterday and will be rolling out a couple more over the next few days to resolve this difference in counts some of you have observed.

Please disregard any counts for inlinks reported by Site Explorer from October 11 through next week.

I hope Yahoo can patch things up as soon as possible. The discrepancy isn't an undersized issue to be ignored.

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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, Search, web 2.0

There are plenty of websites out there that help you collect local news and make sense of goings on in your neighborhood. But ther’es something compelling about YourStreet’s take on local news.

YourStreet indexes articles from local newspapers and blogs. Type in your address or just your zip code, and you’ll notice markers on a Google Map showing locations mentioned in those articles. There’s also a social networking component. You can sign up for an account, and an icon will pop up showing your location on the map. And you can start a “conversation,” for any particular location. Say you want to comment on a play you saw, a good dog park in your neighborhood, or a particular dark alley to avoid at night. Just login and start a conversation.

Like any social network, the more people use YourStreet, the more valuable its data will become. But since the site is part network, part news indexer, there’s already plenty to like about YourStreet, even though it doesn’t officially launch until tomorrow.
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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, Social Software

Sure, Orkut may be big in some nations. But in the US and Europe, Google is best known as a a Search Engine/e-mail provider. While the company lost out on its bid to own a stake in Facebook, maybe Google doesn’t really need Facebook.

After all, what is a social network but a way to connect to other users with similar interests and tastes? While Facebook is a social network with applications for playing games, sharing books and movies, and so on, Google already has applications. Google also has a ton of information about your interests from your search history, e-mail, RSS subscriptions, GTalk, and even Checkout buying habits.

TechCrunch reports that Google is indeed working on a new social network that will combine features from a number of Google services. The social network reportedly bears the code-name Maka Maka, although that could change by launch. The platform would be open, meaning third parties could develop applications for Maka Maka. But the coolest part of the new service will likely be the fact that it could launch with access to a bunch of fully polished applications.
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Tags are very important to achieve top SEO rankings. Good news tagging is now made automatic for blogs thanks to Jiglu.

Yes, Jiglu earlier launch its auto-tagging feature for blogs. Now there's no need for us bloggers to go through each post one by one just to add tags. Imagine me doing that tedious task here in my blog. With overwhelming posts, the task isn't just time consuming; it's pretty tiring as well.

Jiglu's new feature intends to “automatically create intelligent tags and Links for your web content” through only 3 simple steps.

By auto-tagging your weblog, Jiglu aims to allow bloggers to help their readers “dive straight in and read what they want - your most popular blog entries or even stuff buried deep within your site.” It scans a user's blog, seeks relevant tag words, then matches those results to keywords designed to boost SEO potentials.

This is all completed on-the-fly through the Jiglu widget, which users must install after registering their blog at the Jiglu homepage. The widget supports most blogging platforms available, including Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, and others.

To know how Jiglu works visit Loose Wire, Ignite Seattle, and mBites.

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Truth be told, Google has descended on paid Links. Ask forbes.com, washingtonpost.com and a lot of high profile sites; they have experienced the wrath of the new trend. They just had their page rank slashed by 2-4 points. This is why some established sites are entertaining doubts about “paid links.”

One of the reasons for the paid link shakedown is the growing notion that paid Links are not true and not qualified as “voting” links. But the fact is the Search Engine giant is not in opposition to paid links per se.

Google said last summer that all paid Links should be identified as such or risk a penalty. Particularly, it has been suggested that paid links should use the nofollow attribute, which tells Google the link is not intended to transfer PageRank. Use of the nofollow attribute clearly identifies the link as “non-voting.” But a lot of sites ignored the warning. Then, in the fourth week of October, Google dropped the dreaded axe.

Rumors in the web Search Engine Optimization industry are that the buyers of these paid Links could be the next to be hit. So beware.

How do you circumvent this? If you are a seller of Links, use the nofollow attribute. If you are a buyer of links, don't do it for SEO, or you will be very much saddened!

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You might be wondering why the sudden drop in PR for a lot of the websites out there. This drop is the most serious PageRank Penalty I've seen so far.

The sites that are mainly affected are the ones that are selling Links. Matt Cutts has been vocal about their opinion about paid links and thus now, it seems that they've finally updated their algorithms and put penalties on such sites.

Here are the top reads regarding this issue.

seomoz.com
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://andybeard.eu
http://www.dailyblogtips.com
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

I hope google reverse this changes as this has a major impact on the profitability of websites.

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Filed under: Business, Fun, Internet, Web services, Social Software

Is there a better way to end a long week than to sit down in front of the screen and do a little shopping? For some, maybe, but how about when you get good deals?

Shopping online. We all do it out of convenience and the fact that we are able to surf around for the best deals from the comfort of our own homes. RetailMeNot is a website that compiles coupons from major online retailers and makes them available to anyone who wants them. They are the coupons that the stores don’t tell you about. We covered this site way back in 2006, but since then they have completely redesigned their service.

The RetailMeNot website is simple to use, enter the shopping site you want to check coupons for and you will be presented with a generous list of coupon codes and what their deals consist of. Then use the coupons upon checkout from said stores. RetailMeNot also lets users surf around by popular stores, popular coupons and keywords that they have in their database.

RetailMeNot is a quick and easy way to make sure you are getting the best deal online. Some of the deals might have limited time access, and their success rates are noted under stats for each coupon.
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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Blogging, Web services, Social Software

We rarely get through a day without hearing about global warming, and how to make our lives a bit greener. Now Hugg brings it all online.

Hugg, similar to the social news website digg, allows users to vote up and down top news stories. But this site was built by the folks behind the popular eco-blog Treehugger, and it concentrates on green news. With an array of user submitted green news from green gift giving, practical ways to washing clothes and eco-friendly flooring, Hugg is on its way to being your one stop shop for the latest green news and trends in the marketplace.

Categories include architecture, beauty, celebrity, fashion and food. It is a relatively new site that is a bit low on the user submitted news at the moment, but it is growing with at least a few stories hitting the website each day.

So if you’re feeling a little green, check in to Hugg to see what the hottest and freshest eco news is of the day.
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Filed under: Business, Internet, E-mail, Office, Web services, Social Software

Now you can stay in touch with friends using Facebook for Blackberry, a standalone application. Sure Facebook can be accessed normally through the likes of mobile browsers like Opera, but this new application provides more streamlined and optimized mobile access for Facebook.

After installing the application, users can send and view messages, photos, pokes, and wall posts. They will also be able to take a picture and directly send it to their profiles complete with tags if their Berry’s have cameras. Although this is good for long commutes and waiting for meals to be served, it could be encouraging a new level of unproductiveness in the workplace!

There have been reports of Facebook for Blackberry not working with older handsets and on some mobile networks.

You can download the installer from Blackberry or Facebook.
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Are you using CSS? If the answer is on the affirmative you probably know the essence of the Cascading Style Sheet in doing Search Engine Optimization.

If you aren't aware of what method you are actually using on your site, take a look at your source code. If it is brief and clear, you're probably using a CSS.

A Cascading Style Sheet is a method that offers web designers more control over the style of each page. It allows designers to customize each paragraph, title, header, or bulleted list. CSS gives them the ability to specify font, size, and color of anything you want minus the repetitious insertion of detailed lines of code.

Using CSS is essential. Why? Here are the reasons…

1. Using regular HTML codes to define things like font tags can be very burdensome. And the result: polluting your source code with excessive HTML.

2. CSS gets the same result as the basic HTML - only better! Instead of placing the style tags in the actual code, it is placed in an external file. This makes your page clean, trouble-free and organized.

3. Converting old HTML layouts to CSS can usually slash anywhere from 25-50% off file sizes.

4. The use of CSS will also allow browsers to read and load webpage very rapidly. This is good for Search Engine spiders in reading through your website as quick as they possibly can.

5. There is nothing you can do in HTML that you can't with CSS. In fact, CSS gives you even more customized control than any other method.

6. CSS is a huge time saver. Code it once and never again!

The essence of CSS is too much to ignore. Full CSS gives you the best probable foundation in doing SEO services.

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A number of my clients are asking me to enlighten them about private label content. So for those people who want the same thing, here's a quick rundown:

Private Label Content (PLC) refers to article or e-books that are changeable. But some come with some restrictions. To use it to the best advantage, you need to know a bunch of things. Ask the following queries:

1. Can I claim a copyright?
2. Does the PLC come with Resell Rights?
3. Can the articles be offered through auction sites?

It is also worth noting that some PLC cannot be submitted to article directories unless the content is significantly altered. This rule is enforced to avoid duplicated contents on the web.

Most private label e-books are offered as a freebie. But some that cannot be given away. Please be wary of that fact. This is to prevent the PLC from being tagged as a cheap writing.

So before you acquire a PLC, find the balance between restrictions and benefits. Etch your niche!

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