This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

In a world where small businesses with corporate blogs receive 55 percent more traffic than small businesses that don’t blog, companies should be taking note on how to improve their blogs, attract more readers and get more results.

But still, a lot of companies with corporate blogs seem to be bogged down in uniformed policies and simply aren’t thinking outside the box. Afraid to take on colorful personalities or step a bit outside of their company’s happenings, many corporate blogs employ an official tone announcing the play-by-play updates of company news. This is just one mistake that businesses are making in the blogging world.

There is a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we’ve narrowed down the key elements that companies should focus on. Here are 10 tips for corporate bloggers hoping to make a positive splash in their communities.

1. Establish a Content Theme and Editorial Guidelines

When creating a product or service, you must be able to define the value that it’s bringing to consumers. In the case of a blog, you need to clearly define the focused theme that your team will follow. Choose a blog name and theme that fits well with your company’s expertise, but don’t be afraid to branch out into a larger space. Your blog should provide pertinent information for consumers interested in your area of business.

Once you’ve chosen an area to cover, create a set of editorial guidelines that your bloggers will follow. Guidelines can include appropriate verticals and topics to cover, as well as how and when posts should be written.

A clear goal and theme for your blog will make it easier for users to know what to expect. For example, Dogstuff, an online shop for canine gifts, toys and supplies, hosts a blog called Dog Blog. The blog is simple and to the point, and it’s more than evident that the blog is about dogs. The theme is specific enough for readers to understand what they may find, but it is such a broad topic, that almost limitless posts are possible.

2. Choose a Blogging Team and Process

Choose a team of core bloggers to begin your blogging adventure. Select individuals that are knowledgeable and comfortable writing about the areas you would like to cover. Also, it’s key to choose people who write well and have a great online presence.

Train your bloggers on the editorial guidelines and decide what type of writing and editing process you would like to put in place. Some companies prefer to elect an editor or group of editors to have a final look at all blog posts, while other companies allow their bloggers to publish directly. Figure out the level of comfort you have with your blogging, editing and publishing process and implement a procedure that works well for your team.

3. Humanize Your Company

A company blog is an opportune place to let down your hair and get to know your customers. Think of it as a conversation between people, not between a brand and one person. In order to have a conversation, you need two people — a blogger and a reader.

Give your corporate bloggers the freedom to be themselves. Encourage them to have their own personalities and writing styles. This type of diversity is more representative of your company than any monotonous tone that you could manufacture on your own.

Always keep in mind that your blog is about people connecting and conversing with people, not a corporation. Throw away that ‘corporate’ concept, and you’ll be ahead of most.

4. Avoid PR and Marketing

If maintained correctly, your blog will act as a repository of real analysis and opinions provided by your company’s fine employees. The type of insight and expertise that a blog can demonstrate is far more useful than any PR pitch that you could post. Stay away from trying to sell your readers. There are appropriate venues for that, and your blog shouldn’t be one of them.

Continue to add to the conversation, adding value for your readers. Your opinions will be priceless. And for the times that you don’t have an opinion on an important topic, gauge your community’s opinion by taking a poll or interviewing key people.

Lululemon Athletica, a yoga-inspired athletic apparel company, constantly adds value to its community through its blog by providing posts on topics that their core followers would appreciate. Some of the most recent posts were on how to do a handstand, protect the lower back, and explore a new city.

Readers will get a taste of the massive knowledge bank available at your company. Take your mind off of marketing, and you’ll find that the analysis that you provide sells your company better than a press release ever could.

5. Welcome Criticism

Oftentimes, corporations shy away from opening up their websites and blogs for commenting and interaction, because they are afraid of the harm that criticisms may cause. Make it a policy to welcome criticism, thinking of it as an opportunity for feedback and improvement. There are lots of ways to deal with negative feedback, so don’t be afraid to open up to your community.

6. Outline a Comment Policy

Be aware that if you open up your blog for full feedback (which you should), you will get a variety of comments — constructive, complimentary, hateful, and spam. Be prepared for everything. Create a comment policy that your team can follow, and make sure everyone is on same page. Outline the types of comments that should be responded to, deleted or passed along for follow-up.

7. Get Social

Make sure your blog is open for comments and utilizes share tools, such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg. Share tools allow your users to pass along your content. Why not allow your readers to promote your work?

Put forth an effort to respond to comments or forward them on when a specific employee could offer the best expertise in that area. Make sure each employee maintains a personable tone when responding to comments, so that readers know that your bloggers are genuine.

Lastly, if you haven’t done so already, implement a social media strategy for your blog, creating the appropriate profiles across social networks that your readers and customers are active on. Usually, Facebook and Twitter are a good start, and YouTube is a must for video-sharing. When you post on your blog, announce the new post on your social networks and ask for your readers’ opinions on the subject.

Promote your social presence on your blog, by implementing links, buttons and widgets that link to your social profiles. This will enable readers to stay connected with you across platforms. Whole Foods’ blog, Whole Story, for example, displays its social links prominently at the top of the blog.

8. Promote Your Blog

Just as you would promote any other company initiative, get the word out about your blog. Share the URL on your website, social networks, business cards, e-mails, and advertisements.

Without promotion, building an audience can be difficult. Get behind the quality work that your team is putting into the blog and promote away.

9. Monitor Mentions and Feedback

One way to get a pulse on your blog and its effects on the community is to monitor mentions and feedback. Set up Google Alerts for your brand, blog name and any keywords that might be relevant. Search on Technorati and Twitter for those set terms.

To make things easier with Twitter, set up custom search columns in a Twitter client, such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or CoTweet. The columns will update in real time, keeping you up-to-date on brand and blog mentions at all times.

Getting more sophisticated, you should look into social media brand management tools, such as Radian6, for monitoring keywords across social sites.

10. Track Everything

You’re probably accustomed to tracking everything, and your blog is no different. If your blog is a page on your website, make sure your current web analytics tools are set to track all the same data that it monitors on your website. If you don’t currently have a web analytics tool, check out Google Analytics, a free analytics tool with an easy-to-use interface.

At the minimum, make sure you’re tracking site traffic, where referrals are coming from, and traffic-wise which posts are doing best. Learn from the data and adjust your blogging guidelines accordingly.

(Via Mashable!.)

It’s easy to forget that each domain extension is intended to be used for a specific purpose when everyone is using .com for whatever they please. But you might be surprised to find out that a lot of domain extensions have registration restrictions and are still used for their intended purposes.

Or maybe you want to find out which unique domain extensions are unrestricted and can be used along with your killer domain name to make your website stand out. Let’s take a look at the history of domain extensions, which ones are restricted and which ones aren’t, and what specific use each is intended for.

History of Domain Extensions

In 1984, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) established the first six domain extensions: .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .org, and .net.  Shortly after, the first two-character country code domain extensions (like .uk and .us) were established. In 1988, .int was also introduced.

It wasn’t until after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was created in 1998 that any new domain extensions (besides country code extensions) came into use. ICANN has an agreement with the United States Department of Commerce and now operates IANA.

After an application period, seven new domain extensions were introduced in 2000: .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro. Throughout 2005 and 2007, .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .tel, .travel, and .asia were also established.

New domain extensions are sure to come. Just last month, the first ‘internationalized’ domain extensions were established. These internationalized domain extensions are the first to not use Latin characters (three of them use Arabic characters and one uses Cyrillic).

Read on to find out the different categories that domain extensions are grouped under and the specific uses for all of the domain extensions mentioned above.

Types of Domain Extensions

There are two main types of domain extensions: country code and generic (which is further subdivided into sponsored and unsponsored).

Country code extensions are two-character domain extensions for countries, sovereign states, and territories. Many country code extensions have second-level subdomains, like the .co in .co.uk.

Generic domain extensions include all of the other domain extensions, like .com, .edu, and .biz. Sponsored extensions, like .aero, .coop, and .museum, are managed by an organization that is in charge of the policies regarding their registration. Unsponsored extensions are simply managed by ICANN.

All domain extensions are also either restricted or unrestricted. To register a domain name with a restricted domain extension, you have to meet certain requirements. For example, only accredited educational institutions are eligible to register a domain with a .edu extension. Many country code domain extensions are also restricted and can only be registered by citizens or residents of the country that the extension refers to.

Unrestricted domain extensions, like .com, .org, and .net, can be registered by anyone. Some country code domain extensions are unrestricted, which has resulted in the registration of ‘domain hacks’ that create a word using the domain extension. Del.icio.us, for example, uses the United States country code .us to form the word ‘delicious.’

A List of Specific Uses

Here is an alphabetical list of all generic domain extensions and their specific uses.

.aero – Used in the aviation industry.

.asia – Used in Asia.

.biz – Used by businesses.

.cat – Used for Catalan-language websites.

.com – Intended for use by commercial entities, but it is unrestricted.

.coop – Used by cooperatives.

.edu – Used by post-secondary educational institutions.

.gov – Used by United States government entities.

.info – Intended for use by ‘informative’ websites, but it is unrestricted.

.int – Used by international, treaty-based organizations.

.jobs – Used by websites dealing with employment.

.mil – Used by the United States military.

.mobi – Used by websites optimized for access on mobile devices.

.museum – Used by museums.

.name – Used by individuals.

.net – Intended for network infrastructure use, but it is unrestricted.

.org – Intended for use by organizations, but it is unrestricted.

.pro – Used by licensed professionals, including those in the legal, accounting, and medical professions.

.tel – Used to store and publish contact information.

.travel – Used by entities in the travel industry.

Conclusion

New domain extensions are constantly being proposed and debated. Many want more geography-based domain extensions like .asia. To that end, domain extensions like .london, .nyc, and .quebec have been proposed.

There has also been widespread support for the domain extension .kids, which would be used by websites designed for children. Contrarily, the .xxx domain extension has just recently been approved after years of debate, and it’s intended to be used by adult entertainment websites in the near future. What domain extensions do you want to see in the future?

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

This week’s edition includes some easy ways to make a difference with social media, a look at how video conferencing technology is improving education, some new social strategies for businesses of any size, and much more.

Social Media

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• Dear Foursquare: This Is Not the Right Time to Sell

  The location-based network’s extraordinary growth and buzz have caught the eye of Internet heavyweights, notably Yahoo. But if the Foursquare team aims to be a worldwide game-changer like Facebook and Twitter before them, it may be wise to forego the big pay day and keep on truckin’.

• 9 Ways to Do Good With 5 Minutes or $25

  Social media makes it easier than ever to make a difference. Whether you can donate a little bit of time, or a little bit of money, check out these easy ways to contribute on the web or on your phone.

• How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change

  Transparency, open APIs, and free-flowing information are just a few of the ways societies and governments can be improved. This post discusses some important social media campaigns that have made a difference.

• 4 Tips for Tapping Into Twitter Conversations
  Twitter is so much more than just sending updates and links into the void — it’s the world’s real-time conversation. If you want to take part, heed the advice in this post.
• Exclusive: Tour the ‘If I Can Dream’ Command Center [VIDEO]

  The interesting new reality/online video hybrid show ‘If I Can Dream’ hit the web on March 2nd, and its impressive production and technical values have turned more than a few heads. This exclusive tour of the show’s HQ sheds some insight on the unique experiment.

• 5 More Ways to Go Green for Earth Day

  Earth Day may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean you’re off the environmental awareness hook. Explore these social strategies for going green any time of year.

• How Social Media Helped Travelers During the Iceland Volcano Eruption

  The Icelandic volcano eruption cost millions in airline revenue and left thousands stranded, but it may have opened new windows of communication. See how travelers and airlines took advantage of social channels to relay vital information that call centers and websites could not.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

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• HOW TO: Give Your iPhone a Spring Clean

  With so many tempting apps available for download, it’s easy for your iPhone to get cluttered. Well spring is here, and it’s time to organize your mobile life. Check these tips on streamlining your beloved handheld.

• 5 Ways Classrooms Can Use Video Conferencing

  Web-based video chat has allowed students to connect with a world of experts and curricula that were previously unavailable. Take a look at these five examples of high-tech education in action.

• 10 Free iPhone Apps to Help You Go Green for Earth Day

  Environmentalism doesn’t stop at your desktop. Staying green on the go can be a little bit easier with these 10 resourceful iPhone apps.

• 10 Excellent Examples of Recycled Gadgetry

  If you’re all about gadget-themed decor and apparel (and who isn’t really?), you won’t want to miss these awesome products, built from the circuits and wires of yesterday’s tech.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business

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• Why It’s More Important Than Ever To Be an Early Adopter Brand

  If your business aims to compete at the speed of social media, it’s critical that you be ahead of the curve on the latest trends. This post discusses why.

• HOW TO: Reignite Your Business Network Online

  Without a viable network, your business probably wouldn’t be successful. If that old Rolodex or business card pile is growing stale, here are some tips for reconnecting online.

• How Recruiters are Using Social Media for Real Results

  Social media has opened up a whole new channel for recruiters to scout. Here are some tips from the pros who have landed great candidates from the social web.

• How Companies Can Use Sentiment Analysis to Improve Their Business

  What are people saying about your brand on the web? Is it good or bad? How bad should it get before you intervene? These questions can be answered by employing a sentiment analysis strategy.

• 5 Unique Ways to Use Twitter for Business

  Contests, customer service, recruiting — it’s all been done on Twitter. If your business is looking for some fresh ideas, be sure to check in here.

• 8 Social Media Strategies to Engage Multicultural Consumers

  The purchasing power of multicultural consumers is growing exponentially. If you want to reach them, you need to understand how to connect. This post has some tips on using social media to do so.

• 5 Masterminds That Have Redefined Startup Life

  Along the road of Internet entrepreneurship, there have been thought leaders who took risks, and changed the game for everyone. Check out these five profiles of some of the most influential minds in tech business.

• Why Retention Should Be Your Top Priority in Social Media Marketing

  If your business model hinges only on how virally your product is shared, you may be missing the bigger picture. For long-term sustainability, customer retention is key.

• Top 10 YouTube Tips for Small Businesses

  YouTube is a too-often neglected channel for promoting your business. Because it’s free and has incredible reach, it’s the perfect platform for small businesses to set up shop. Here are 10 best practices to note while exploring your web video strategy.

• HOW TO: Add Blogger Outreach to Your PR Plan

  The opinions of bloggers reach far and wide, making them a great vehicle for your brand. If you haven’t added blogger outreach to your PR arsenal, read these tips for best results.

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

(Via Mashable!.)

Like I said, Wordpress began as a simple content management system for bloggers. It was pretty light, fairly simple to install and use and worked great for what it was meant for: blogging. I’m here to tell you it is still light and easy but it has grown to be much more than just a blogging platform. Extensions and non-blog Wordpress themes have done a great job making it into the CMS it is today and through the upgrade process, many of those useful extensions have been built in and now it works great running all sorts of sites.

This article will introduce you to 5 non-blog Wordpress themes that will show you how well Wordpress does on sites that aren’t necessarily blogs.  A few of the site types you’ll see are: magazines, church sites, portfolios, and photography sites. I have looked around and found some of the best themes for the jobs and I hope you enjoy.

Newspress – A Great Magazine Wordpress Theme

Magazines have hit the internet and they’ve done well creatively. I think a good magazine site will be colorful, easy to navigate, highlight main or new articles and will draw your attention to the content. When it comes to magazine themes, layout makes a big difference.

Newspress does a good job of immediately getting your attention. Across the top, you will see articles being highlighted with pictures from the individual articles. I believe the theme does this automatically for you. There are some customization options and a widgetized footer for further flexibility.

Churches Can Use Wordpress Too

I think Wordpress lends itself very well to running a site like a church site. That’s because of the amount of changes a church site could see on a weekly or monthly basis and Wordpress is a fairly simply CMS to learn. Churches don’t always have the budgets for professional webmasters or design professionals so a simple CMS and free non-blog Wordpress themes make life a lot easier.

The Delta Theme is a very amiable choice for a church website. It’s layout is very easy to figure out and shouldn’t be all that unfamiliar to someone who frequents church sites. With easy page navigation up at the left of the banner, and a thin sidebar directly beneath, and a wider right sidebar, there is plenty of room for things like services times, contact information, and calendar widgets.

Easily Setup A Portfolio Site Using Wordpress

If you are a design professional of any type these days, you’ll be wanting a presence on the internet. You’d want something to grab and hold attention, using graphics and photos that are large enough to show off your skills. You’ll also want it to be easy to navigate as to not frustrate any potential clients.  Wordpress makes setting it up easy… with the right theme of course.

The WP-Creativix theme may just be the portfolio theme you’ve been looking for. In my opinion, one of the best portfolio themes, WP-Creativix has many of the features a design professional may be looking for. It has easy page navigation along the top, large pictorial previews of each project just below the page navigation, and an easy scroll through of the rest of your projects.

Show Off Your Photography Skills With Wordpress

A good photography site or blog will actually get out of the way and allow the photography to take center stage. That not only means that the design should not be distracting, but also that the navigation should be unobtrusive. You can also have a page set up for each photo explaining about it. Wordpress, with the right theme, can help you accomplish all of this quite easily.

Viewport is one of those photo blogging themes that gets out of the way. Notice how the page navigation is small and subtle. There’s a search box but it’s not distracting. There are arrows on either side of the photo allowing you to easily flip through the photographs. There’s also a caption and quick description which also allows you to click through to a post that tells more about the photograph. All you can ask for in a photography theme, right?

Use Wordpress as an Internal Communication Tool with P2

As mentioned in an earlier article, How To Use Wordpress As A Twitter-Like Communication Tool, if you make use of Automattic’s P2 Theme, you can also turn Wordpress into a tool that may help pull your business or organization out of the uncommunicative rut.

The theme takes much of its usability from Twitter and it allows you to easily, and in real time, post and reply right from the front page. Want to know more? Just check out the post.

Wordpress, even though it began as a simple blogging platform, can be used in many different ways. These are some of the best non-blog Wordpress themes highlighting many of those non-blogging uses. What other uses (and themes highlighting those uses) can you think of that Wordpress may be good for? Let us know in the comments.

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

This guide will help you make that decision by showing you how to compare apples to apples. By understanding what hosting companies mean by what they say, you’ll be able to decide which hosting company and package best suits your needs.

1. Price

This is the aspect most of us will look at first when choosing a hosting provider; however, it shouldn’t be the deciding factor. When you see price differences it’s helpful to remember the old maxim that we get what we pay for. Jumping on the cheapest offer you see isn’t necessarily the best idea, especially if you rely on your site to make money. Things like non-outsourced support and quality hardware cost money, and a hosting company that charges $1.99 per month likely won’t offer these features. Take a closer look at the features that each host provides, and THEN compare prices.

Further reference(s):

• HostMonk – A site with comprehensive list of hosting companies and their packages. Use this site to compare prices of almost any web hosting companies’ hosting packages.
• WebHostNinja – Another good site for web hoting price comparison.

2. Area of Focus / Specialties

It’s a fact that not all web hosts are right for all different kinds of customers. Some offer great shared plans but don’t have solutions that are good for growing businesses, while others have great enterprise solutions but aren’t the right fit for someone with a small recipe blog. Look into a company’s specialty or area of expertise before you buy, and go with one that understands your particular needs as a customer. You can find reviews and recommendations on the Web, and many of these will talk about a particular company’s strengths and weaknesses.

3. Tech Specs / Limitations

Take a good, honest look at your site and figure out what you want it to do. If you’re hoping to host a blog, an e-commerce site, rich content, and videos, then you shouldn’t go with the cheapest hosting package you can find. A cheap hosting plan probably won’t have the RAM, processing power, and disk space to serve all these needs, and you’ll spend more time dealing with downtime or load issues than you would like. Look to see what you are getting with the cheap host and what features are included in the cost. Do they charge for additional domains, support, backups, etc.. Call them. Ask questions. Tell them what you envision your site’s needs to be. Just don’t take it for granted that they take your site as seriously as you do.

4. Tech Support

In most people’s opinions, this is the big one. When my site, for some unknown reason, goes down, can I call up and get a real, live person on the phone? And, more than that, can they find out what’s wrong and fix it, or at least tell me what I need to do to get my site back online? Before going with a host look into their reputation for customer support. See what kinds of different ways you can contact them when you need support – email, toll-free phone, chat, and so on. Are they staffed 24/7? Do they outsource support?

You’ll find that, like in price and technical specifications, all hosts are not equal. Some hang their hat on their support crew, and some view customer support as an afterthought. Steer clear of the latter.

5. Features / Add-Ons

This area of consideration comes down to the following question – What makes this hosting company special? What extra incentive do they provide to make hosting your site with them just a touch more attractive? Whether it’s multiple data centers, energy-saving practices, or additional features such as regular data backups or free domain privacy, hosting companies often offer more than just servers. If you see one that offers something you need or find important, that can be a good indicator that you should look into using that company.

6. Hardware

You might have to do a bit of reading (or question-asking) to get to the bottom of this one. What kind of machines does your hosting company use? Are they top-of-the-line, out-of-the-box new machines, or are they cobbled together from what might be spare parts and chicken wire? If the hosting company doesn’t say what kind of servers they use, you’ll want to ask, since hardware can affect the performance of both their servers and your site.

Further reference(s):

• Key factors in selecting Web hosting hardware

7. Customer Reviews / Satisfaction / Reputation

This is one of those factors that you’ll have to get a little creative to get the real story on. Do a Google Blog search for a particular hosting company, or look them up on Twitter – whatever you have to do to see what their current (or former) customers are saying about them. Are they easy to contact for support? What’s the average time it takes to respond to a ticket? When they find a problem with a site, what’s their course of action? This is one of the great things about social media – ask a question about a company, and you’re more likely than not to get a few answers.

Further reference(s):

• LifeHacker readers’ favourite web hosting (list)
• Web Hosting Talk – one of the largest web hosting community on the net.
• Web Hosting Jury – reviews submitted by users themselves.

8. Email Features

This is one of those areas where you might not have considered asking your host for help. If you have a spam problem, then it may be because your hosting company doesn’t provide an adequate solution to stop it. Look into or ask about your provider’s spam solutions and general email practices. No matter what they say, email isn’t dead quite yet.

9. Control Panel / User Interface

Even if you’re the least tech-savvy person in the world, there are some things – installing WordPress, setting up email, setting up FTP accounts – you should be able to do without calling your hosting company’s support line. Does your provider use cPanel or Plesk to make updates and modifications easier, or do they use some clunky interface that no one can figure out? You’ll most likely be the one working with it, so if you can’t figure it out, then that’s going to be a problem.

Further reference(s):

• Try a cPanel Demo
• Try a Plesk Demo
• cPanel vs Plesk

10. Scalability / Room to Grow

Finally, an important thing to consider about your hosting provider (and the plan you choose) is whether or not they fit into your plans for the future. In other words, what you consider adequate hosting now might not meet your needs two years from now, once you start selling your wares online and getting some good traffic to your site.

Any web-based enterprise should have its eye on growth, so if a hosting company might have difficulty accommodating that growth it could pose an issue. Does the host have VPS or Dedicated Server solutions? Will they be able to easily upgrade your account? Transferring from one host to another takes valuable time and effort which could be avoided if the company can scale their solutions for growth. As with all these factors, do some research, get some opinions, and make an informed decision.

11. Bonus

Last but not least, we’d also like to share with you some useful resources that might be handy when it comes to web hosting.

• Ruby on Rails Hosting – A comparison of services that provide ROR hosting.
• Understand Cloud Hosting – ‘Cloud Hosting’ has been quite a buzz these days, but do you know what it means?
• 10 Solutions For Your Cloud Hosting Needs – Sitepoint and their fair share on cloud hosting needs.
• Who Is Hosting This – Find out who is hosting which website

(Via hongkiat.com.)

Check out these indispensable resources which include an exclusive peek inside YouTube’s inner sanctum, a swath of in-depth iPad coverage, and some essential social business tools.

As if that’s not enough, there are always those hilarious cat videos.

Social Media

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• How a Facebook Group Helped Reunite a Band for Charity

  The band God Street Wine became popular in the 90s and played their last official show in 1999. But thanks to a group of fervent Facebook fans, the band is reuniting in NYC for a good cause.

• Top 10 Recut Movie Trailers on YouTube [VIDEOS]

  We’ve picked ten of the best recut movie trailers on YouTube that add a horror angle to the most light-hearted of films.

• 3 Ways Live Events Improve Online Communities

  While there is a lot of chatter about online communities, less is said about how to connect your online community members with each other, or with you, offline. Check out these three tips for improving your online community.

• The History of Location Technology [INFOGRAPHIC]

  Location-based social networks may be hot now, but location technology is nothing new. This infographic explores the history of location tech from primitive to advanced.

• Exclusive: Inside YouTube’s War Room

  Whether positive or negative, whenever a major social site rolls out a new feature, users respond very loudly. For their recent redesign, YouTube was prepared.

• Top 10 Funny Cat Videos on YouTube

  Whether you want talking cats, surprised cats, dramatic cats or nom-noming cats, this lists should tickle your funny bone with ten examples of the finest feline vids on the Internets.

• HOW TO: Clean Up Your Facebook Profile

  With all your friends, Fan Pages, apps, and friends’ apps, your Facebook feed can get pretty hairy. Check this guide for some quick tips on cleaning it up.

• 3 Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation

  As we spend more of our social lives online, our reputation becomes harder to manage across many networks. Here are some tips for keeping tabs on how the web perceives you.

• 6 Ways Brands are Using Social Media For Real-World Action

  Businesses should start thinking about new ways to mobilize their social media audiences to take action in the real world. Here are 6 great examples of just that.

• 5 Ways Mega Charity Events Can Harness the Power of Social Media

  Mega charity events like Twestival and 12 for 12k have demonstrated fantastic principles for grassroots cause efforts. These 5 pointers came from social media experts in the non-profit sector.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

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• iPad App Hands-on Reviews: Twitterific, Netflix, and ABC [VIDEO]

  Want to see some of the most anticipated iPad apps in action? Check out these video reviews.

• 10 Great Sites for Watching Video on Your iPad

  As we know, Apple and Flash (by Adobe) do not intend to play nice anytime soon. However, there is hope for mobile web video in the form of HTML5. Here are 10 sites that utilize the new code to render video on the iPad.

• 3 Ways to Destroy an iPad [VIDEO]

  Whether for marketing, science or sport, some individuals are more interested in destroying the iPad than in ogling its sleek design. Check out these three videos and quench your thirst for techno-destruction.

• 10 Awesome Apple iPad Cases

  Apple’s iPad hit shop shelves last weekend, so we thought we’d bring you the best cases you can currently buy — as well as some coming-soon options that might be worth holding out for.

• 5 Fantastic Free iPhone E-book Reader Apps

  In case you’re not grabbing an iPad any time soon, we’ve pulled together a list of five free apps that offer you e-book reading abilities on your iPhone.

• 4 Web-Based Meeting Schedulers Reviewed

  A slew of online applications are attempting to eliminate the headache of scheduling meetings. Here is the run down of four applications that just might make the logistics a little easier.

• 3 Reasons to Get Excited About the Apple Game Center

  This summer, the iPhone and iPod touch will get an operating system update (iPhone OS 4.0) that will include a new service called the Game Center. Here’s why we’re psyched about it.

• The 10 Best ‘Get a Mac’ Ads

  Love them or hate them, Apple’s iconic ‘Get a Mac’ ads made a huge impact on pop culture. We’ve learned that the campaign is slated for the deadpool, and rounded up ten of our favorites.

• 10 Free Services to Monitor Your Site’s Uptime

  You can’t sit staring at your website(s) 24 hours a day to ensure it’s up. Fortunately, there are free services out there that can do it for you.

• How Publishers Plan to Monetize iPad Content

  The release of the iPad has the publishing world wondering if paid digital content will put the industry back in the black. A few publishers are already taking some interesting approaches.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business

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• 5 Tips for Using LinkedIn to Find Star Employees

  Successful business people are always looking for their next rock star employee. The good news is that the latest LinkedIn stats – 60 million professional profiles spanning 200 countries – would indicate this is a good place to look.

• Top 5 Ways to Make Your Site More Fun

  Just like sex, fun sells, and by using the theories of game mechanics and the Funware Loop, you can make your website or application more engaging for your users.

• 10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers

  Like anything else, social media marketing is easier, more efficient and more effective if the marketer has the right set of tools. Here are 10 essentials for B2Bs.

• How Businesses can Harness the Power of Online Communities

  Online communities, whether they are managed by their related companies or not, are enormously valuable. Here are some strategies for maximizing their business potential.

(Via Mashable!.)

Typography is an integral part of design. Think of all the different uses of typography on the web, from large headlines and bold blocks of text to smaller-sized text in body copy, and you’ll soon realize that not only is it a crucial part of a web design, but that it’s a pure combination of art and science.

We’ve come a long way since the start of the internet, but the use of typography is as important today as it was back in the day.

Typography Basics

Typography is the use of type in a design. Typography seeks to create a greater meaning by thoughtful and deliberate selection font, size, color, layout, alignment, and other factors that affect the design of type on a page.

There are two major classifications of fonts to choose from: serif and sans serif fonts.

Serif fonts have serifs or extra embellishments at the end of stokes; some call them feet or tails.

Sans serif fonts are without serifs; no extra details are found on the end of each letter.

Things to Consider for Typography on the Web

There are many differences in handling type in print versus on the web. Things to think about with text on the web are contrast, color, readability, and size.

Colors on a monitor screen are created by light, and it becomes more important to think about contrast because it’s straining to look at and read text with poor contrast. Black text on a white background is the easiest to read because it provides the most contrast. Color theory and color choice play an important role in web typography.

Sans serif fonts have been proven to be more easily read online in body copy because serifs make it tougher for the eye to follow, while the opposite is true for printed text.

Although at an increased size and with more leading—the amount of additional vertical space between lines of type—sans serif fonts can still work fine in body text on the web. Serifs work great in headlines and headings because they give a special accent to a headline and because serif fonts are easy to read when dealing with smaller quantities of text.

Size is an important factor to consider when choosing your font styles. Text that is too small is hard to read, but text that is too big takes up too much space. Find a size that works well with your design and is easy to read.

Taking Control of Fonts

There are many settings that control the way your font appears on a web page. Font size, as mentioned previously, is certainly important. The three most popular units of measurements are: em, percentage (%), and pixels (px).

Declaring font sizes in CSS is simple, here’s an example of paragraph elements being assigned a unit of 1em.

p {
 font-size: 1em;
}

Em is a widely used form of typographic measurement for web designs because it scales well and can give you finer increments of size (i.e. 1.35em).

Pixels are measured relative to the screen resolution and give you a bit less control as you can only use whole numbers (i.e. 2px).

Many people like using percentages for font sizes because they give the user control of font sizes. The size is determined by their browser’s font size settings.

Kerning and leading can also be controlled with your CSS. Kerning is the space between characters and can be controlled with the letter-spacing property. Leading can be controlled using the CSS property, line-height. Both are great ways to control the look of your text.

Other possible and less popular units of measurements are:

• points (pt)
• pica (pc)
• inches (in)
• centimeters (cm)
• millimeters (mm)
• x space (ex)

Using pt is great for print stylesheets because they are a print unit of measurement. Points shouldn’t be used in your web pages because there are big differences between browsers when using points; Mac OS computers tend to show text 25% smaller than PC computers.

Web Safe Fonts

What is a web safe or web standard font? These fonts make up a group of a select few fonts that are available on most computers. This is what currently limits font choices on the web under CSS2 specifications.

Choosing from the web safe fonts available will ensure better control over what your text looks like on all browsers and operating systems. The consensus for the most popular fonts are:

• Arial (Mac OS equivalent is Helvetica)
• Times New Roman (Mac OS equivalent is Times)
• Verdana
• Georgia
• Courier

Other popular fonts:

• Impact
• Lucida Console (Mac OS equivalent is Monaco)
• Lucida Sans (Mac OS equivalent is Lucida Grande)
• Palatino
• Tahoma (Mac OS equivalent is Geneva)
• Comic Sans
• Trebuchet MS

When using any of these fonts—especially the ones from the second list—it’s a great idea to include a few options to fall back on in your CSS, as explained in the following section.

Setting Your Fonts

There are a few methods to choose from to display fonts on your websites. If you’re using a web safe font, you can declare it via CSS, such as in the following example:

font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; 

It’s important to include several fonts just in case someone doesn’t have your first option. This gives your user’s browser something to fall back on. This list of fonts is called a font stack.

Redefining ‘web safe fonts’ with CSS3

Current CSS3 specs allow you to choose from any licensed OpenType or TrueType font at your disposal. You can do this by using @font-face, as shown in the following example:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Journal; src: url(journal.ttf) format('truetype');
}
h1 {
  font-family: 'Journal', sans-serif;
}

Font replacement tools

There are several font replacement methods at your disposal if you are still unsure about using @font-face in your designs.

Cufon

Cufon is a favorite font replacement tool to use because it’s relatively painless to integrate into a website. Plenty of documentation is available on their website, as well as the text generator that spits out code you’ll need. Although it’s a good, solid solution, it’s not without it’s downsides—currently text rendered by Cufon is not selectable by users.

sIFR

sIFR is a Flash-based text replacement method and is just as nice as Cufon. You’ll need Flash to create a font file for your site. It’s best used on headlines or very small blocks of text because the load time can drag on a bit if you use it extensively on a web page. The downside is that it doesn’t work without Flash enabled in your browser, but the upside of sIFR versus Cufon is that text is selectable.

Web Typography Mistakes

Lack of typography consistency is one the biggest mistakes new web designers make. Font properties are best controlled globally, and it’s good practice to set the font family, size, color, line height and weight for the body element of all your pages through CSS, such as in the following example:

body { font: 1em/1.3em Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #000; } 

You should set heading styles globally as well for h1, h2, and h3. Link styles should also be set globally.

Choosing fonts that are too similar is not a good choice, and should be avoided by carefully looking at the style of fonts and the design of the site to choose something that is appropriate. Most serif headings pair well with sans serif fonts for body text. Pairing two sans serif fonts is a bit trickier but is certainly a viable option.

(Via Six Revisions.)

Facebook Insights shows some demographic information on your page, but is limited to information about interactions with your fans.  The free Google Analytics tool offers more sophisticated and comprehensive data.  Adding Google Analytics to your fan page can be done easily but requires some special steps.

One of the limitations of Facebook fan pages is they can only run limited JavaScript. Google Analytics needs JavaScript code included on a page to correctly track visitors in the traditional way.  And running JavaScript won’t work on your fan page…

However, there is a new solution.  Using free and opensource FBGAT (Facebook Google Analytics Tracker), you can get Google Analytics working on your Facebook fan page. Now you can track visitor statistics, traffic sources, visitor countries, and keyword searches with all the other powerful reporting of Google Analytics.

What follows are the instructions to set up Google Analytics tracker on your Facebook fan page. (Note: Your fan page must use an HTML application like static FBML for you to use this method.)

#1: Create a Google Analytics account

If you already have a Google Analytics account, create a new website profile to separately track visits to your Facebook fan page.

Where it says ‘Add a Profile…’, simply paste your fan page URL or use Facebook.com.

<

After the step above, Google will display your tracking code. The tracking code generally looks like this: UA-3123123-2.  Note: Google will tell you to activate the website.  You do not need to do this.

#2: Get your tracking images

The way to work around the Facebook JavaScript limitation is to generate custom images. FBGAT is a free tool that will generate your custom image code to track visits on each of your Facebook fan pages.

The above screenshot shows what the code generator looks like.

Here’s what to include in the fields shown above:

• Analytics Code: This is the tracking code that you got in step #1. (It is very important that you enter this correctly.)
• Domain on Analytics: The domain name you created in step #1 (use Facebook.com if you used it in step #1).
• Page Link: This is to let you track the page on Google Analytics. What would you like to call your page so that you’ll recognize it in Analytics?
• Page Title: This is for your reference.

After clicking the ‘Generate Code’ button, you’ll get a code which you’ll need to copy in full. You’ll have to generate a separate code for each fan page you want to track and place it as shown in step #3 below.  Note: If you have multiple pages powered by FBML, you can do this for each page.

#3: Add the code to Facebook

Place the code generated as shown within your Facebook page using an app like Static FBML.  Programs like Static FBML allow you to add HTML to your pages.  By simplify editing your Static FMBL pages and inserting the code from step 2, Google Analytics will track all visits to those pages.

You can place the code anywhere as long as it does not disrupt functionality of your existing page. I prefer the top or the bottom of the page.

That’s all there is to it. The tracking has begun. Google Analytics will now need about 24 hours to show you a report of your visitors.

Tracking Visits to Your Fan Page Wall

The wall might be your main page. To track this, again you will need to create a page with static FBML. The only difference is that to show this on the wall, you are required to make it a box. Just click on the (add) on the Box, and it will be added to the wall. To change this setting, click on ‘Application Settings’ under the FBML that you would like to create as a box. As with other pages, please note that you have to create a unique tracking code for this page as well.

What do you think? Will you be able to better justify your Facebook marketing with this added insight? Please comment below.

(Via Social Media Examiner.)

In this first installment, we’ll be covering Goals and Funnels. For a general overview of site analytics revolving around Google Analytics, read Unleashing the Power of Website Analytics.

Defining Your Goals

Setting up goals in Google Analytics is the best way to measure the success rate of your website.

The easiest way to understand what goals are in Google Analytics is by discussing it with an example: ecommerce sites.

The aim of ecommerce sites is to sell goods to their visitors. Therefore, a completed goal would be a successful sale on their website.

This example hints at the first part of using the Goals feature in Google Analytics: defining what your site goals are.

• What do you want to measure?
• What are the factors that determine the success of your website?
• Are you after sales?
• Are you wanting to generate enquiries from prospective clients that want to hire you?
• Or do you simply want visitors to click around and spend more time on your site reading articles?

Once you know your goal (or goals), you need to work out how they will be measured.

For most sites, this will mean either identifying a specific goal completion page (or creating one).

For example, an ecommerce site might set up their ‘order confirmation’ page as their goal, because this page usually comes right after a finished sale. If you’re after client enquiries, then how about the page that is shown to users when they successfully send a message with your web form?

Adding a Goal in Google Analytics

If you haven’t added a goal yet, clicking on Goals in the left hand menu will show you a page that gives a brief overview of what Goals and Funnels are. At the bottom, click on the set up goals and funnels link to get started.

The second box after the Main Website Profile Information section will allow you to set up your conversion goals. You can group your goals together with goal sets, but to start, we’ll just look at setting up one basic goal. Click on the Add goal link on the left, preferably on Goals (set1).

After doing that, you’ll be faced with the Goal Settings page.

Give your goal a name, make it active, and then choose a position; Set 1, Goal 1, for example, refers to your first set of goals, with ‘Goal 1′ indicating that it’s your primary goal.

You will then have three types of goals to choose from.

When you choose a Goal Type, you will be shown a section called Goal Details, which are settings of your goals.

URL Destination

URL Destination is the most common option and is used when visitors get a specific page to visit. For example, a completed checkout page in an ecommerce site.

Time on Site

The Time on Site goal type will track users who spend either more or less than a specified amount of time on the site.

Pages/Visit

Pages/Visit keeps track of people who visit more than, less than or an exact number of pages on the site.

Time on Site and Pages/Visit only give you a single option aside from setting the goal and that is goal value.

Goal Details

For each goal type, there are certain goal details that you can set to customize your goal.

Goal Value

All three goal types have the Goal Value option. It is a monetary return that you estimate a completed goal to be worth; this is normally worked out as part of a website marketing strategy or review.

As an example, if a website enquiry, on average, gives a return of $10, then you should set the goal value to $10.

In most cases, this is just an estimate, so if you’re not sure, you can set the Goal Value to 0.

In the case of ecommerce sites where a completed checkout is worth a variable amount, you can set the goal value to your average basket value.

If you’ve set up Time on Site or Pages/Visit as your goal type, you’re now done and you can click the Save Goal button.

If, however, you’re setting up a URL Destination as a goal type, read on.

Match Type

The Match Type goal detail has three options: Head Match, Exact Match, Regular Expression Match.

Which one to use will depend on how much variety there is in the URL or your goal page.

Head Match: If your goal page requires variables in the URL that can change, such as /checkout/?page=1&basket=50036, then using Head Match will match the starting string of the URL (/checkout/).

Exact Match: If your goal page is a static URL that doesn’t change, such as /contact/thanks.php, for example, then you’ll want to go for Exact Match.

Regular Expression Match: If it’s likely that the start of the URL could change, then you should use Regular Expression Match; this is useful with URL cases such as /department1/checkout.php and /department2/checkout.php.

That’s it for Goals in Google Analytics—let’s move onto Funnels.

Setting up funnel

What are funnels? For certain goal pages, there is a set route of pages that users must go through to get to your goal page.

Let’s take a typical checkout process on an ecommerce site as an example: You add something to the basket, enter your shipping details, add your payment details, and when you submit your order, you get a confirmation page (which is your goal page).

This path is known as a funnel process, and by tracking people’s progress through a funnel, you can see where there are problems and where people are leaving the process.

This is most often used for checkout processes to see where people are dropping their shopping cart baskets. Funnels highlight problems with a long-winded checkout procedure.

Firstly, you need to map out the pages of your process. For example, your checkout process might have these pages:

• basket.php
• shipping_details.php
• payment.php
• confirmation.php

Once you’ve determined your funnel, it’s time to review your goals.

Reviewing Goals

So your goals are all set up, now how do you actually find out information from them?

You can see your goal data straight from the Sites Overview page. Under the headings you’ll see a completed goals column which gives you a basic, straightforward figure that is excellent for a quick glance. But let’s have a deeper look.

Note: A quick thing to highlight is that whilst you can look at visitor numbers for the current day, you’re unlikely to get goal conversions in Google Analytics for the current day, at least not reliably anyway. This is because Google Analytics refreshes its data at regular set intervals, so it is better to look at data from the days before the current day.

The basic goal page, which is obtained by clicking on Goals on the main left-hand menu, provides the immediate information you need at your fingertips.

You’ll see the standard Google trend timeline and the breakdown of how many visitors completed which goals—this is more useful when you have multiple conversions set up. You’ll then get the conversion rate and the goal value if you’ve entered a value for a conversion.

All these are fairly straightforward and the goal conversion figure is the one that most people will tend to concentrate on and quote, especially with ecommerce websites.

So moving down the left hand side, you now have a number of extra menu options that we’ll look at in turn.

Total Conversions:

This shows the total number of conversions and breaks it down by day for the period you’ve selected. This gives an easy visual comparison of better performing days and can help identify trends – do you get more conversions on weekends, maybe?

Conversion rate:

This looks the same as total conversions, right? Well, it is similar, and on sites that don’t have massive differences in traffic from day to day, they’ll look almost identical. However, where the total conversions page was based on the number of conversions per day, 40 conversions being larger than 10, for instance, conversion rate is based on the number of conversions as a proportion of the total visits for that day. So 40 conversions out of 120 is a rate of 25% – 10 out of 20 is 50%, so the weighting now changes.

Goal Verification Path:

This will list all the pages a completed goal was carried out on. If you’ve used an absolute path (e.g. /contact/thanks.php) they should all be the same. But if you’ve used a head match and the end of the URL varies, then this will show which URL each goal conversion comes from.

For example: if you have a shopping cart and the end of the URL is just the cart id, it won’t be much use as they’ll all be different, but if you have something more meaningful in the URL—lets say the source of the site visit or conversions on different sub domains—then it can become useful.

If you have golf.shop.com/finished and football.shop.com/finished, you can quickly compare where your conversions are happening.

Reverse Goal Path:

This data point shows the pages people landed on leading up to a completed goal. This is useful for seeing which pages are funneling more conversions, and for those results showing (entrance), which landing pages are funneling those conversions.

So as an example, we have thanks.php set as our conversion:

• (entrance) > index.php > contact.php > thanks.php

This shows that the visitor landing on the homepage went next to the contact page and then completed a conversion; you can quickly see which pages funnel in more conversions and easily start to work out which pages are more successful to understand how you can improve other pages.

Goal Value:

If you have various goals set up with different values, you can use this page to quickly see which days are more profitable and then use other tools to dig down into why.

Goal Abandoned Funnels:

This page gives you an overview of the number of people who enter the goal conversion funnel, but exit without completing a goal. You can quickly see how many potential conversions your site is losing and again compare over the time period you have selected.

Funnel Visualization:

Once you open up this page, it is self-explanatory: the usual timeline chart at the top of the page and then a flow diagram through the funnel you set up.

At each stage, you can see how many people enter at that stage, how many people are continuing in the funnel from the previous stage, how many people leave at that stage without completing, and perhaps most importantly, where they are going.

This is hugely useful for analyzing things such as checkout processes and seeing where users abandon their shopping carts and where they go.

For instance, if you have the first stage as the shopping basket, it wouldn’t be too alarming to see people exiting from there to continue browsing the site. But if they’re exiting all together, maybe something on the shopping cart page is making them drop from the process?

You can then look and see where people are dropping out and this can easily highlight problematic or broken forms and links or long-winded pages that people simply give up on.

Drilling down even further

The basic pages give you a very useful set of tools to analyse your conversions and abandonment, however, if you want an extra level of detail, the advanced segments tab can provide some very handy information.

Located in the top right of the page just above the trend graph and date picker, it will open up a drop down with a list of visitor types.

Selecting them via the tick box will show the relevant figures on the page and allow you quickly compare visitor types. Are conversions for new visitors higher than returning visitors? Do people who arrive via paid search (Adwords) abandon more carts than those who arrive by organic search? These are some of the questions that you can answer by using Google Analytics.

(Via Six Revisions.)

As most search engine optimization (SEO) experts are aware, getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever. Not only do Google’s search and indexing algorithms continue to evolve in complexity, but Google has given over more and more of its search results real estate to ‘blended’ search results, displaying videos and images towards the top of the first page, and pushing down—and sometimes off the page—traditional web results that would have otherwise competed for top rankings.

But where problems arise, so do opportunities. Although Google’s newfound enthusiasm for video has created more competition for fewer traditional search results, it has enabled sites with video assets—even sites that would otherwise score poorly in the Google index—to successfully achieve first-page rankings. In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 53 times more likely than traditional web pages to receive an organic first-page ranking.

Here’s what a blended search result looks like for the search query ‘777 built in 4 minutes‘:

Those images at the top of the search results are video thumbnails, and today, there’s only two ways to get there:

1. Upload your video to YouTube.

The advantage of this is that you are 100% certain to be indexed into Google’s search engine. This does not guarantee you’ll get a first-page result, but at least it ensures that Google knows your content exists.

The drawback, of course, is that anyone who clicks on a YouTube result will be taken to YouTube, which may be fine if your goal is branding (i.e., you only care that people watch your video). If your goal is driving traffic, as is typically the case with SEO, this won’t be a successful strategy.

Your other alternative is:

2. Video SEO

Video SEO is a set of techniques designed to make sure that:

• Google finds your video content
• Google successfully indexes your video content
• Google will display your video content when specific keywords are entered as search terms

Here’s how to make it work:

You Need Video Content

Google is fairly flexible in what it considers to be video content. You can use actual video footage, but screen captures, slide shows, animated PowerPoint slides, and other content will work just as well. Google can’t actually ‘see’ what’s inside the video content, so it relies on title and other meta-data to determine what content your video actually contains.

Submission, Not Discovery

With traditional web pages, Google utilizes crawlers to discover and index web content. Unfortunately, Google can’t read Flash very well (although it is trying), and as a result, most video content is invisible to Google’s search crawlers. Therefore, the best way to appear in Google’s blended search results is to submit your video to Google using a Video Sitemap. This is similar to an XML sitemap, but is formatted specifically for video, and only contains information about your video content. It is submitted using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

The most common error in Video SEO is to assume that because you have submitted the web page on which a video resides, that the video content itself is being indexed.

You’ll also need to make sure that you have a robots.txt file on all video pages, to ensure that Google can easily verify that the locations on the Web you’ve submitted do in fact exist, and that they contain embed codes which indicate the presence of a video.

Title and Title Tags

When ranking videos, Google primarily considers the match between search keywords and the video title. Although Google allows you to submit other meta-data such as description and keywords, these currently don’t have much influence on your search ranking. Google likes it when the title tag of the page matches the title of the video, and will give a higher weighting for results where this is the case.

Video SEO is Long Tail

Like traditional SEO, you’re much more likely to see results with Video SEO if you target more specific, or longer tail, search terms. A video titled ‘Dog’ is unlikely to produce a first-page ranking, while a video titled ‘German Shepherd Police Dog’ will be more likely to score well in Google’s algorithm. Since Google can’t determine the actual content of the video, you might consider submitting the same video multiple times with different titles that match potential search terms.

New and Small Don’t Matter

With traditional SEO, the age of a website is an important consideration for Google in deciding its ranking. Google also considers things like the number of pages on the site, and the number of links to the site, along with the importance of the places those links originate.

In Video SEO, none of this matters. This means that even new sites and small sites can compete on equal footing with larger and more established players. Publishers who are too small or too new to even consider traditional SEO can still be taking advantage of Video SEO opportunities.

For the Foreseeable Future, Video SEO is a Winning Strategy

As time goes by, Google’s discovery and indexing of video content will no doubt become more sophisticated, and as competition for video results increases, it will become harder for sites to achieve these first-page rankings. However, the number of web pages still massively outnumbers indexed video assets, and for as long as that continues, publishers will have an opportunity to jump to the top of Google’s search results through Video SEO.

(Via TechCrunch.)