Adam March 30th, 2011

The new Google +1 experiment (the blue box and the “You +1′d this” above) looks very familiar to another, big social networking company’s button.  I wonder who?

It seems to me that Google is really trying to get in on the “I approve this link or page” deal and that isn’t a bad thing.  Since Google has been changing some things up ie. new account / services bar at the top of Google search pages, new Google profile pages, heavier integration into the Youtube profiles, integration with Twitter, and much more, we’ll see the social impact of our daily lives and online habits playing in to the results for search engines.

This is big for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as I can see the traditional ways of getting web sites high rankings ie. good, unique content, an good user experience, back links, meta tags, title tags, optimized pages and such being put along side the social links and likes.   I’m not sure yet (and I think it’s to early to tell) what kind of weight these social links have but I’ve certainly been noticing them in my search results.  I’ve especially noticed the “Steve shared this link” on some of my search engine results pages (SERPs) and that’s gotten some sites higher in the rankings then some other traditional methods even when I thought that the link that was shared didn’t have to do with my search keywords.   An example for my Google account and the SERPs for the keyword “wordpress”.  Normally I’d be looking for the wordpress official site which a friend did share the link to but further down the list of results I see on of my hosting companies pages “we host wordpress” which is definitely not what I’m looking for.  I follow that host on Twitter in order to see server downtime information in real time should there ever be an issue (there hasn’t been anything for years by the way).

As I see it, social is here to stay and it’s something that has to be embraced instead of avoided.  It’s only going to get deeper and deeper in our online experience.  Using that information securely, privately will, in the test of time, decide which way the people will go to and adapt to.  I’m very curious about people exploiting the social aspect though.  It’s time consuming but it isn’t tough to set up dozens or hundreds of fake online accounts and if someone is willing to take on that kind of management then I think there’s room for the system to be gamed.

I’m contemplating doing an experiment of my own with a Twitter account.  I did like to see if following a ton of people, which will eventually get tons of followers back or using web based software to manage or drop people my account is following but don’t follow back ie. Flashtweet and others) then posting links to websites for SEO purposes.  Would those sites get highly improved SERPs ranks?  Is the social factor a huge factor for Google or a small part?

Thanks to my client Tyent Universe for use of the screen shot of their search result.

• Search Engine Optimization , Site , The Big G , Web Design
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Adam January 2nd, 2011

It’s been a bit so I thought I would wish everyone a Happy New Year!

This new year brings a lot of challenges, goals, and some new resolutions. I haven’t figured out them all but a few things I’m looking at for the new year are increasing my knowledge of online marketing. Wow, that’s generic… Specifically, I’m looking to learn more about email marketing, deeper analytics reporting, more targeted and local search engine optimization, and business development.

Email marketing is a different ball game when it comes to online marketing then what I’m accustom to. I’ve certainly been like the rest of us in getting tons of offers, newsletters, and such in my email inbox but I’ve only scraped the surface of the other end from the senders point of view. There’s many factors to thing about these days with mobile phones, spam filters, spam companies, white and black lists, various email clients, allowable HTML coding, remote images, hosting, opt-out, paid and non-paid marketing lists, and much more. Learning the in’s and out’s of email marketing is my next undertaking for this new year.

I am always interested, and for the past few years, done a bunch of reading, learning, practicing, and testing search engine optimization. One of the most important aspects of search engine optimization is really reporting or analytics. Since it’s impossible to see what the traffic of a website is just by looking at the page (unless there’s a hit counter but who has one of those these days) using analytics to see where the web site’s traffic is coming from, how much traffic, what search engines are using it to be found, what keywords are bringing visitors, the bounce rate (one visit to a page and then leave the site), and a ton of other useful information. All of this tells the web site owner or search engine optimizer what is working, what isn’t working, what to focus on, and what to strengthen. It’s not the only tool I use but it certainly one of the most important tools one can use on their web site. At my company Azunga, where we do Portland Web Design and Development, we make sure analytics is installed on all our clients websites. It’s one of the first things to do after the website is developed. We do this to get as much historical data as possible and to get the best idea of what’s worked in the past, what hasn’t worked, any signals on new traffic sources, and to get the best idea of what’s happening with a web site.

Some of the things I’ll be working on in the new year will be deeper analytic reporting. That will be testing and running many conversions and reports using funnels, goals, and conversion rates. With a deeper reporting on some of our ecommerce websites we’ll be able to get better understanding of the typical users, what their habits are, and what exactly they are doing.

Big G's Local Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Well, I’ll talk more about my goals for targeted and local search engine optimization more in the future. I’m specifically talking about local searches on the big G. I have a recent post in which it messes up with my location and thinks I’m in Portland, Maine instead of Portland, Oregon.

With the search engine results pages (SERP’s) being changed recently in late October, the SERP’s now have a larger places result on the page as well as the local map moving to the right side bar. My recent post showed my dissatisfaction with the change but like all big G things, especially search, we are all subject to whatever changes they decide to make. From what I’ve heard the map wasn’t been looked at much by people performing the majority of the local searches. Some things that I’m looking more at are which terms bring up local results, which results are pulled up and why, which factors are involved in the “seven pack” (the places with the A-G markers) results, the weight of reviews and keywords within the reviews and much more. I’ll be keeping my blog updated with information about what I find.

As for the business development aspect of my news years resolution and since I’m new at starting a web development business, I’m planning on a lot of research, talking with other owners, talking with clients, and getting feedback from trusted sources about what works, what to improve on, what doesn’t work, and where to go. I suspect and believe that this won’t be a “get this done this year” but an on going effort to continually improve, refine, and figure out just what works. I’ll be writing my first business plan soon and from what I hear a month to write it should be around the right amount of time it takes to properly form a business plan. More about it soon.

So what are your new years resolutions? What do you think about mine? Hit me up in the comments and

• Oregon , portland , Search Engine Optimization , Site , The Big G , Web Design
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Adam February 24th, 2010

I just signed up for Dropbox.com and it’s a great service. It’s a free (2gb’s of storage) and a paid (plans start at $99 for 50gb’s / month, ouch!) service.  It that allows you to have an online back up of your files and sync them up between computers or with the iphone app they made.  It’s a nice tool if you work across multiple computers such as myself.  I get done my daily work with the design firm I’m with and I stay after to get a few of my own projects done.  Dropbox will allow me to leave my working projects in a Dropbox and make sure that each computer I work on will have the most current version.   It beats carrying around a thumb drive (which I forget half the time) or emailing files all over the place.

Now I’m writing this post as a cheesy way of trying to get my disk space higher on Dropbox. If you use this link to the dropbox site and sign up both parties (the person signing up and the referrer) get an extra 250mb of space up to 3gb.  Pretty good for a free service that works well.

• Miscellaneous , Site , Web Design
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Adam November 12th, 2008

Well I finally found the app that I really think works well for posting to all your audio, video, pictures, and txt to social networking websites ie. facebook, wordpress, myspace (ehh), twitter, flickr, and many, many more.  Cellspin.net is a great app. that seems to work well but he only thing that I find as a downfall is that when it posts to my wordpress blog (here) it makes the image too large and it over laps my menu on the right hand side.  So, I’ll be tweeking and testing so if you see a few weird posts then don’t yell at me.  I’m just doing the normal trial and error testing.  I recommend trying it out and seeing if it works for your needs.  It seems very promising.   

• Iphone , Miscellaneous , Pictures , Site
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Adam April 16th, 2008

So I implemented a new photo plug-in for this blog. It works now that I’ve done some tweeking to the code (doesn’t it always work that way) and looks decent. Problem is that I overwrote the Style Sheet that does all the extra customizations that I did. So if your reading this right after the post then the page looks weird. But have no fear I’ve got a backup (I’m smart like that) and it’ll be fixed as soon as I’m back on my laptop which is later tonight. It’s a simple upload of a file I’ve already spent tons of time on so things should be back to normal shortly.

Keep an eye out for other updates coming soon. Those include a link page, a media page (view some video of me doing some random things), and a profile page (get the dirt on me, even though I don’t have any).

Check back soon. Updates are always happening.

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