Busby SEO Test – Optimizes Them for Devices

Google is now providing optimized search results for Android and the iPhone. Results pages on these devices are now designed to compliment the devices they are being viewed upon. You can view a few examples in screenshots here, or you can see the results in action on an iPhone in the following video:

“In some situations, you’ve already been seeing the new search results pages,” says a post from the Google Mobile Team. “Now, all Google search options for Android and iPhone lead to results that load faster and are formatted to fit the screen so you don’t have to zoom or scroll side-to-side. We’ve also added touchscreen-friendly buttons and expandable maps for local business results.” Busby SEO Test

There has been a lot of talk of search improving in the mobile realm heading into 2009, and Google has shown a fine example of this with these improved results pages. I can’t wait to see what more they do throughout the new year. Busby SEO Test

Comes with Several New Features

Google has released AdWords Editor version 7.0, a mere two months after 6.5 came out as Barry Schwartz points out at Search Engine Land. Google did not make any major announcements about the release, but just kind of put it out there, and we have not yet seen much in the way of user reactions.

New features listed in the release notes at the AdWords Editor Help Center include:

- First page bid estimates
- Keyword Quality Score
- Keyword Opportunities Locale
- Campaign targeting in the data view, and
- Send feedback to Google

In the AdWords Editor Forum, an AdWords Editor Advisor notes:

You will need to download your account again after upgrading to version 7.0. To save your comments and unposted changes, click ‘Backup then Update’ when you see the automatic prompt to upgrade. AdWords Editor will create a backup file that includes your comments and unposted changes. Then, after you’ve installed the new version, import the backup file by following the steps at http://www.google.com/support/adwordseditor/bin/answer.py?answer=38667. If you’d prefer to upgrade later, click ‘Don’t Update’ in the prompt.

Additonal updates to AdWords Editor include the ‘Volume’ column on the Keyword expansion tab of the Keyword Opportunities tool now showing absolute numbers (traffic for the last month) instead of scaled values, and the Keyword Opportunities tool is no longer available for draft accounts.

Retail sites see big gains

The official start of the holiday shopping season saw Americans flock to online retail sites, boosting several categories, including toys, consumer electronics and department stores, to double-digit traffic gains in November, according to comScore.

“The current economic situation has caused retailers to slash prices and offer highly attractive offers, such as free shipping, to appeal to cost-conscious Americans this holiday season,” commented Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix.

“With budgets a top concern for consumers, the ability to conveniently search the Web to find the best prices has become an increasingly important part of the holiday shopping buying process, for both online and offline purchases.”

Retailing was the top-gaining category for November with retail toys growing 24 percent to 31.3 million visitors during the month, led by Toyrus sites with 15.4 million visitors (up 65%), Barbie with nearly 4 million visitors (up15%), and KB Toys with 2.6 million visitors (up 119%).

Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals drove growth at department stores sites, which jumped 20 percent to 80 million visitors during November. Walmart.com landed the top position in the category with 44 million visitors, an increase of 50 percent from October. Target rose 26 percent to more than 39 million visitors, followed by JCPenny with 18 million visitors (up 39%) and Sears.com with 16 million visitors (up 76%).

With popular electronic items like the Wii, iPods and Garmin GPS on holiday gift lists, consumer electronics category increased 17 percent to 55.8 million visitors. Bestbuy.com led the category with nearly 20 million visitors, a gain of 66 percent from the previous month. Circuit City followed in the second spot with 15.4 million visitors (up 42%), and Wal-Mart electronics grabbed the third spot, more than doubling to 9.5 million visitors.

Google sites continued to be the most visited property in November with 147 million visitors, trailed by Yahoo sites with nearly 144 million visitors and Microsoft sites with 123.5 million visitors.

The holiday shopping season boosted several retailers including, Amazon (up one spot to #8 with 63.5 million visitors), Wal-Mart (up seven spots to #15 with 47.4 million visitors) and Target (up six spots to #18 with more than 39 million visitors). Busby SEO Test

Users share brand information

More than half (54%) of consumers say that information from a brand representative is more valuable than what is usually found on a company Web site, according to new study, “The Impact of Social Media on Purchase Behavior” by research firm OTX on behalf of DEI Worldwide, a social media marketing agency.

They found that 63 percent of consumers would like to share their opinions about a brand or product with a representative, and 67 percent are likely to pass along information from a brand representative to other people.

More than half (57%) of consumers are likely to take action based on information from a brand representative, such as buying a product or shopping at the retailers.

“62% of consumers responded that information from a brand representative would be more valuable than advertisements or promotional materials,” said Lou Cuming, chief operating officer of DEI Worldwide.

“These findings are particularly interesting because they support what we have been saying all along, that Word of Mouth is a valuable marketing tool that should be combined with traditional media to create an integrated marketing strategy.”

People rely on social media Web sites as much as company Web sites for product information and 70 percent of consumers have visited a social media Web site such as a message board, social network, blog and video sharing site to get information on a company, brand or product.

The study also found that people who search for information only using social media sites are more likely to spread the word. More than one-third of consumers have passed along information found online and among those, six out of 10 used social media Web sites to share the information. Nearly three-quarters (74%) said most of the information the passed along was positive.

Friend Connect Integrated with Twitter
Google has announced that its new Friend Connect platform has now been integrated with Twitter. Now you can Tweet from any Friend Connect-supported site.

“This means that when you join a friend connected site, you can choose to use your Twitter profile, discover people you follow on Twitter who are also members of the site, and quickly tweet that you have found a cool website,” explains Google Friend Connect Product Manager Mussie Shore.

“With Google Friend Connect, Twitter folks will be able to bump into and recognize each other out there on the web—and discover new people to follow on Twitter,” says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone on the Twitter Blog.

To send a tweet at a site using Friend Connect:

1. Click the invite links in the members gadget
2. Click the Twitter icon on the share tab
3. The next time your followers sign in to Twitter they’ll see your tweet

“This integration with Twitter is an example of how we want to continue improving Friend Connect, extending the open social web and bringing social features to more places on the web,” says Shore.

Friend Connect was originally launched in preview form back in May, but was just releasd publicly earlier this month. To learn more about it, watch the following video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N94s7ix0JPo[/youtube]

Busby SEO Test

A website is a handy and trendy marketing tool for business. For a good website, the visual web design must be attractive and must be able to grab the attention of a large number of visitors.

Web designing is an art and has to be done with interest and involvement. When done with involvement, the user-friendly feature will automatically get incorporated in the design. Stunning busby seo test web design with good programming and marketing strategies will greatly increase the visibility of the website to the Internet browsers.

From this introduction it can be easily understood that web design is the key aspect of a website. For designing a user-friendly website here are a few tips which I gained through my experience in web designing. These busby seo test useful tips, when implemented, will yield good user-friendly web designs.

Here we go.

1). What does the website convey?

Your answer to the question will lead you all the way to a good and meaningful web design. For designing a website, one should have a theme. On getting to know more of what the website is about, as a designer or as a Webmaster, it will be easy for you to design accordingly.

2). Planning for the web design

Planning makes work proceed smoothly. The first step in planning is research. Surf through the web to find sites similar to yours. Do a simple yet meaningful research to understand the pulse of the visitors. On doing so, your first impression will always be the best one.

3). Setting theme and layout

After your research and planning, the vital part of your web design is the collection of assets. The first step will be theme selection and webpage layout. There are personal websites, informational websites, ecommerce websites and service providing websites. It is all in the hands of a designer to select a matching theme to satisfy the need and implement it attractively.

4). Web Page Design

Neat and informative busby seo test web pages are the most visited pages on the net. To design such a web page, the important elements to be taken note of are the header, footer, text area and the navigational area. Avoid using animated/flashy headers and navigational icons. Use a uniform header and footer to give a professional look to the website. These, when designed with care and when followed, will result in good web design.

5). Site Map and Navigation

In web designing, the term navigation is very much apropos with user-friendly. Navigation within the website should be very clear and easy. Always try to implement normal links for moving around, and avoid animated buttons. The column to the right of the webpage should have good navigational links. The site map is another important and easy way for finding web pages in the website. So, never forget these as these are the principal tips to be remembered while designing.

6). Usage of images and text

Web designing is all about expressing the ideas of the business to people. For it to be a success, use of correct images for communicating the content of the website to the visitors is a must. The text in the webpage must be search engine optimized and must convey the message clearly.

7). Page Size and Download Time

After placing the images, links and the text, the complete page should not exceed 30 KB. This size will ensure that the page is downloaded quickly, within 5 to 6 seconds. This time is crucial time because either it may bring visitors or divert them to another website of the same type.

The above are a few important tips to be considered while designing a website. You can follow them or modify them to suit your need. But the fact is that designing is about presenting the information in an elegant, decorative and user-friendly way. Busby SEO Test

In the session “Search Engines on Auditing” the speakers discussed how search engines handle auditing concerns.

Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite, discussed auditing issues with PPC and how they try to figure out what went wrong.

Analytics ecosystem:

Collect

Analyze

Report

Optimize

Monetize

Ways ad networks protect you:

Invalid/discounted clicks

Real time behavior analysis

Proactive filtering

Over-time analysis

Mathematical models

Honeynet projects- open proxy

Zwicky said ad networks don’t see what happened after the click left their network, which is why it is important for you to audit your campaign.

You can make ad networks better by using the parameters they have to tighten your campaign and actively control your results. Not everything that goes wrong is fraud.

“When you have an issue, file a claim – it’s the only way you will receive help,” Zwicky said.

Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, Google, said there are 2 main incentives for click fraud, attacking advertisers and inflating affiliates.

Numerous methods:

Manual clicking

Click farms

Pay-to-click sites

Click bots

Botnets
Ghosemajumder said Google uses a three-part system for invalid click detection:

1. Filters- automated algorithms filter out invalid clicks in real time, analyzes all clicks, and account for the vast majority of invalid click detection.

2. Offline analysis- automated algorithms and manual analysis

3. Investigations- rare

“When we mark clicks as invalid, we’re not charging the advertisers for those clicks,” said Ghosemajumder.

Nearly all invalid clicks are detected proactively. Reactively detected invalid clicks are a negligible proportion (less than 0.02%).

“The impact of invalid clicks at Google is minimal.”

Several features help and protect advertisers:
SmartPricing

AdWords Auto-Tagging

Site Targeting

Site exclusion

Invalid clicks reports

Placement reports

IP exclusion

AdSense click area change

• Takeaways:
  
• Validate data collection methods
• Define conversions carefully
• Use advanced analytics features to spot trend in data
• Conduct experiments to get more data

Busby SEO Test

An interesting debate is raging among copy writers, web designers and content developers about the differences, if any, between writing copy for the web versus writing content.

According to prolific copywriter Nick Usborne of Excess Voice, a recent survey conducted among the readers of his newsletter of the same name offers some interesting results. They seem to be split almost three ways: one-third consists of copywriters, another content writers and the final third both.

But it’s wrong.

This is an important debate, I believe, since all online copy is content but not all content is copy. And that’s a real problem.

Most web designers, webmasters and content writers develop text for websites in a way to educate visitors. They also write it with the notion that “content is king,” “content increases search engine rankings,” “content makes a website sticky” and so on. That’s all fine and good.

But I believe content fails when it strives only at informing the reader, and thus lacks important elements that take her “by the hand” and compels her to do something – anything, including the simple act of reading.

In other words, while some websites may compel our attention, others fail to propel our actions, too. And their owners often end up screaming, “Why is my website not producing any sales,” “why am I getting a lot of traffic but such a poor response” or “why are people leaving so quickly?” Well, if content is king, copy is the castle.

The Internet is not a traditional medium — at least not in the broadcast sense. It is intimate, dynamic and interactive. People are more involved when reading the content of a website than reading a conventional print publication, watching a show on TV or listening to a program on the radio.

And with the Internet, people have a powerful weapon that they don’t have with other types of media, and they usually don’t think twice about using it when the need confronts them: their mouse.

So, the idea is this: forget about writing content, at least in the traditional sense. Think copy. Think words and expressions that compel the reader to do something, even if it’s just to continue reading.

According to online dictionary Answers.com, “copy” is defined as “the words to be printed or spoken in an advertisement.” (And “advertisement” is defined as “a notice or announcement designed to attract public patronage.” It’s calling for some kind of action. It’s selling something, in other words.)

But the word “content,” on the other hand, is defined as “the subject matter of a written work, such as a book or magazine.” And keep in mind that there’s no mention of the Internet, here.

Nevertheless, this is why I submit that, with its multitude of links, scripts and hypertexts, the Internet transforms the passive reader into an active, responsive participant. (Or make that “response-able.”) And she must therefore be treated as such – as a participant, not a reader. Busby SEO Test

Look at it this way: a book is limited by its front and back covers. When the book is done, it’s done. The web, however, is not.

If your content does not strive at getting the reader to do something, whether it’s to buy, subscribe, join, download, call, email, fíll out a form, clíck or whatever, then you need to seriously rethink your content and the words you use.

Here’s my explanation of the difference between content and copy. Content informs. Copy invites. Even if content invites a reader to keep reading, it’s still selling an idea. It’s still calling for action. And it’s still copy.

If your web page is only meant to inform people like some kind of book, then it’s content. (And like closing a book once it’s read, the only action left is to exit the website or close the browser.) But if it contains links or more content, then it’s copy. And you need to write content with that mindset.

Ultimately, incorporate within your content a direct response formula that compels your readers to do something. Don’t leave them hanging. Take them by the hand. Integrate a call for some kind of action, in other words. Ask your reader to “buy now,” “join today,” “get this,” “download that, or …

… Better yet, simply “clíck here.”

Busby SEO Test

Everybody talks about YouTube monetizing itself, but what about users monetizing their own YouTube accounts? You know how we like those success stories. The guy who made millions using LinkedIn, the guy who made millions from financial blogging, etc. The New York Times is profiling a guy that went from a little public access show to making big bucks from YouTube clips. Busby SEO Test

This guy named Michael Buckley started a little entertainment news show called “What the Buck?” that ran three nights a week on public access, and his cousin started posting clips on YouTube, which started drawing some attention. Brian Stelter at the Times writes:

All he needed was a $2,000 Canon camera, a $6 piece of fabric for a backdrop and a pair of work lights from Home Depot. Mr. Buckley is an example of the Internet’s democratizing effect on publishing. Sites like YouTube allow anyone with a high-speed connection to find a fan following, simply by posting material and promoting it online. Busby SEO Test

When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so hard does it? Unless your content is just so great that it spins virally out of control quickly, it’s going to take some time and effort to succeed. “I was spending 40 hours a week on YouTube for over a year before I made a dime,” the Times quotes Buckley as saying. Being one of the original members of the YouTube partner program surely helped too. Busby SEO Test

Watching the video, it’s hard to believe Buckley could make so much doing that, but a quick flip through the channels on cable television makes it seem all the more realistic. With some hard work and a camera, this could be you. Busby SEO Test