Does Your Web Site Need a Workout?
June 18, 2008
Is your web site working hard enough for you? Run it through the following 20 point fitness assessment to find out:
- Is your site fully search engine compatible? Are all your pages being indexed by the major search engines?
- Do you track your visitor statistics on a regular basis? Do you use the information provided by your visitor statistics to improve your site?
- Is your web site accessible to visually-impaired visitors? Does it meet the international standards set down by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)?
- Do you know which sites and search engines provide you with the most traffic? Do you use this information to improve your traffic further?
- Do you track the source of all reported errors in your site statistics and fix them promptly?
- Do you know which keywords your site was found for in the search engines? Have you conducted keyword research to determine what search terms your target markets are looking for so you can optimize for them?
- Does your web site HTML code validate to W3 standards? Do you check for validation regularly?
- Does your site contain zero broken links? Do you check for and fix broken links regularly?
- Has your site been fully search engine optimized to integrate your target search terms into your Page Titles, META Tags and visible page text?
- Have you created and submitted an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps?
- Have you created and submitted a sitemap to Yahoo Site Explorer?
- Have you checked to see if your site meets Google’s Webmaster Guidelines?
- Do you measure your visitor sign-ups and conversions on a regular basis? Do you tweak your landing page copy to improve the conversion rates?
- Is your site navigation intuitive and are your visitors following the navigation paths you intended?
- Do you encourage feedback from your site visitors and provide an obvious way for them to provide such feedback?
- Are there at least 250 words of text on your home page to satisfy search engines?
- Does your site contain a visible, text-based site map to aid user navigation?
- Do you have an ongoing link building campaign running to secure more incoming links to your site and improve your site’s link popularity score?
- Does your site have a high percentage of repeat visitors? Are the majority of your visitors staying on your site for more than a minute?
- Do your search engine referrals and site traffic figures grow each month?
Unless you can answer yes to all the questions in the above checklist, your web site is not working hard enough for you and needs a workout. Get to it!
By Kalena Jordan
New Music Branding and Advertising Synchronization Service Announced by The Sync Agency and Music Intelligence Solutions, Inc.
June 16, 2008
New Music Branding and Advertising Synchronization Service Announced by the Sync Agency and Music Intelligence Solutions, Inc.
Sophisticated Profiling of Music and Mood Improves ROI from Advertising Campaigns and Strengthens Brand Identity for Global Corporate Brands and Institutions
London, England – June 16, 2008 – The Sync Agency, one of the UK’s leading music strategy and branding agencies, announced the company will be using Music Intelligence Solutions, Inc.’s patented Hit Song ScienceTM and Music UniverseTM discovery services to help source rich and varied music content for brands and institutions on a global basis.
The Sync Agency helps international brands like Motorola, ING, Orange, Marks and Spencer, British Telecom, Heineken Beer, and Honda define their tone of voice and harness the power of music across all of their communications channels. Music Intelligence Solutions is a global leader in the field of digital music and media discovery.
Google: We Want You To See When Your ISPs Do Tricks On You
June 14, 2008
Want to know if/when your ISP is shorting your broadband connection through network manipulation known as throttling? Google is working to give you what you need to determine those very things. So said the company’s senior policy director Richard Whitt earlier this week at a discussion at Santa Clara University.
Using Social Media To Drive Traffic
June 10, 2008
SMO, or Social Media Optimization, helps build website traffic by using social media based websites. The dawning of web 2.0 has seen many different social media websites crop up in an equally large number of different guises. Content sharing, social bookmarking, and collaborative websites form the basis of this initiative and it is these types of websites that you need to use in order to leverage the power of the social web.
Coin Operated WiFi Station
June 9, 2008
Handlink has designed a WiFi 802.11 b/g coin operated access point targeted for hotels, coffee shops, restaurants and other public access areas.?? After you deposit your money, it prints out a receipt with your temporary password to access the network.?? Once time runs out, the connection is terminated automatically.
It is not clear if any companies have expressed interest, but who knows, you may soon see one of these pop up in your hotel room!
(Via Tech News Watch.)
Will John McCain Pull A Hillary When It Comes To Internet Media?
June 9, 2008
Will John McCain Pull A Hillary When It Comes To Internet Media?: ”
The SFGate has published an interesting piece that looks at how Internet media affected Hillary Clinton’s campaign:
What hurt Clinton most, political analysts say, is that she couldn’t consistently use the newfound ubiquity of video to soften her image with voters. Or, as George Washington University Professor and new-media analyst Michael Cornfeld said, ‘It’s like the Clintons, both of them, had sort of a ‘Sunset Boulevard’ thing going on. They were silent screen stars who couldn’t make the transition to talkies.’
Conquering video in the digital age has less to do with being telegenic or smart, as both Clintons are. Being a politician in the YouTube era means being comfortable with giving up control of your message and realizing that everything you say or do can be uploaded within minutes for the whole world to see - and then mashed up into something new.
‘Hillary’s announcement video had really high production values, like it was a made-for-TV movie,’ said Dan Manatt, executive producer of PoliticsTV.com, a political video site.
So were her first Web chats, where she answered questions from voters. They may have looked good, but they weren’t the stuff that generates buzz for a campaign.
‘The Web values authenticity,’ Manatt said, ‘and these were seen as staged and scripted and inauthentic.’
AdSense for RSS Feeds Set to Launch Next Week
June 1, 2008
AdSense for RSS Feeds Set to Launch Next Week: “Google-owned FeedBurner is set to launch AdSense for RSS next week according to a post on the company’s blog. Much like the AdSense for Web sites, AdSense for RSS will show contextual text advertising in publisher’s RSS feeds. In other words, if you’re reading a blog post about mobile phones in Google Reader, you might see ads for AT&T, Verizon…”
(Via digg.)
Revision3 Sends FBI after MediaDefender
May 29, 2008
Revision3 Sends FBI after MediaDefender: “The popular Internet television network Revision3 suffered from a severe DDoS attack, launched by the infamous anti-piracy organization MediaDefender. After targeting The Pirate Bay’s trackers, MediaDefender apparently thought it was a good idea to spread their fake torrents through Revision3.”
(Via digg.)
Netflix DVD-rental business to peak in 2013
May 29, 2008
The trade in DVDs by mail that Netflix pioneered will be a business in decline within five to ten years according to CEO Reed Hastings. But he’s bullish about online delivery, not surprising considering the recent release of the Roku set-top box. ‘Our key challenge is growing earnings per share and subscribers while funding streaming (online video) which should give us years of subscriber and earnings expansion.’
(Via Valleywag.)
Confirmed - iPhone Take Two Coming On June 9th
May 22, 2008
Looks like the iPhone fever is not gonna die anytime soon. The Rumor mills have been abuzz over the past few months with talks about what features the 3G version of the iPhone would bring to the table. As everyone suspected the 3G iPhone would indeed reveal itself the coming June 9th.
