From: sitepronews.com

I shake my head every time I read one of these blanket statements. I’m amazed at how so many people still think that one size of copy still fits everyone. It’s just not true.
Here’s an example. A while back, I read, “Prospects hate being bombarded by text-heavy pages, especially on a home/landing page.” This is [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

One Size Does Not Fit All when It Comes to Writing Copy

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/01/29/one-size-does-not-fit-all-when-it-comes-to-writing-copy/

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From: sitepronews.com

When you manage a website there are some things that you need to know. For example, might it be a good idea to ask yourself questions such as; is the site effective and does it accomplish what it should? Getting answers to such questions is not always the easiest thing in the world. That is [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Top 5 Tools to Analyze Your Website

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/01/29/top-5-tools-to-analyze-your-website/

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From: sitepronews.com

If you are not using Twitter effectively, you are missing out on a serious opportunity for promoting your business. For those that do not already know, Twitter is an online service, designed to let family, friends and workers chat and stay in touch. Twitter famously asks the question; “what are you doing?”
As well as being [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

A Twits Guide to Twitter Promotion… 10 Top Tips

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/01/29/a-twits-guide-to-twitter-promotion-10-top-tips/

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From: sitepronews.com

If you are not using Twitter effectively, you are missing out on a serious opportunity for promoting your business. For those that do not already know, Twitter is an online service, designed to let family, friends and workers chat and stay in touch. Twitter famously asks the question; “what are you doing?”
As well as being [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

A Twits Guide to Twitter Promotion… 10 Top Tips

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/01/29/a-twits-guide-to-twitter-promotion-10-top-tips/

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From: searchenginewatch.com

Google AdWords has opened up Conversion Optimizer to greater eligibility. Customers who use AdWords’ free Conversion Tracking tool and have at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days are now eligible to use Conversion Optimizer.

Conversion Optimizer uses your conversion tracking data to optimize ad placement based on the likelihood of conversion. The tool should save you time by essentially automating the optimization process and time, making you more productive and efficient.

“You might already adjust your keyword bids with the goal of increasing your conversions or decreasing your costs, but the Conversion Optimizer is able to adjust bids using additional factors that are otherwise unavailable,” wrote Amanda Kelly on the Inside AdWords blog. “This includes varying bids by broad match query, user location, and the particular search or content partner sites where the ad is appearing. These extra adjustments enable many advertisers to achieve double-digit percentage increases in conversions while paying the same price or less for each conversion.”

Related Reading:

Google AdWords Releases 7 New Help Videos

Google Wants Feedback on Ad Planner

Google Releases AdWords Editor Version 7.0

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/526494860/090129-112826

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From: google.com

Every day, you do a hundred or a thousand jobs, some of which are occasionally handled by specialists. You make a sales call or give a presentation or answer the phone… you design a slide or create a simple spreadsheet. You get the idea.

When you are busy being a jack of all trades, you’re competing against professionals. The recipient of your work doesn’t care that you are also capable of doing other things. All she wants is the best she can get.

I’ll define a professional as a specialist who does industry standard work for hire. A professional presenter, for example, could give a presentation on anything, not just the topic on which you’re passionate about.

When you compete with professionals, you have a problem, because generally speaking, they’re better at what they do than you are.

I think there are four valid ways the think your way out of this situation:

1. Hire a professional.
2. Be as good as a professional.
3. Realize that professional-quality work is not required or available and merely come close.
4. Do work that a professional wouldn’t dare do, and use this as an advantage.

The first option requires time and money you might not have, and I’m presuming that’s why you didn’t do it in the first place.

The second is a smart option, particularly if you do the work often and the quality matters. Slide design and selling are two examples that come to mind here. The first step to getting good is admitting that you aren’t (yet.) Invest the time and become a pro if it’s important.

The third option is worth investigation, but it’s what you’ve probably already decided without putting words to it. Is the assumption really true? Does your customer/client/employee actually believe that they haven’t been shortchanged by your amateur performance? It is costing you in ways you’re not measuring because you’re willfully ignoring the consequences? Think of all the sub-pro experiences you’ve had as a customer, instances where someone was pretending to be a chef or a bartender or a computer jock but just came up short… Were you delighted?

The fourth option is really exciting. From personal YouTube videos to particularly poignant and honest presentations or direct and true sales pitches, the humility, freshness and transparency that comes with an honest performance might actually be better than what a professional could do. Harvey Milk was an amateur politician, not a pro. If you’re the only person on earth who could have done what you just did, then you’re a proud amateur.

You can’t skate by when you refuse to mimic a professional. You must connect in a personal, lasting way that matters. That’s difficult, but the professionals have no chance to compete with you.

Be an amateur on purpose, not because you have to.

Read Original: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/mLORtnnJb_I/what-would-a-professional-do.html

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From: searchenginewatch.com

We asked what you might want to see here, and what would a promotion-monitoring component look like? In today’s online promotion & link building column, “Bribing People With $50 Gift Cards: Part Deux,” Sage Lewis shares some readers’ ideas that far exceeded expectations, and could really help push this column further along.

» Full story

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/526397707/090129-000001

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From: feedburner.com

Posted by randfish

Last week, I did a Whiteboard Friday, The Microsite Mistake, in which I called out a practice I see as potentially detimental to SEO - using a separate domain to accumulate links for your content site. I was not arguing against all microsite strategies or all domain separations or even all subdomains, just pointing out that this particular usage wasn’t a very logical one. Then came the comments…

Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely love the vibrancy and passion and level of engagement from all our readers and commenters, particularly those that disagree. Honestly, I believe that it is when we disagree and confront one another in positive, constructive ways that we learn the most so please, keep it up! In this instance, though, the comments weren’t a particularly good place for me to address all the many thoughts that arose - that takes a post, and here it is.

Root domains vs. Subdomains vs. Subfolders

• Root Domains - the domain name you need to buy/register with a TLD extension
  • Examples of root domains
    • *.seomoz.org
    • *.searchengineland.com
    • *.blogspot.com
    • *.about.com
• Subdomains - the “third level” domain name; these are free to create under any root domain you own/control
  • Examples of subdomains
    • www.seomoz.org
    • searchengineland.com (yes! even without a third-level name it falls under our definition of a subdomain in this application)
    • postsecret.blogspot.com
    • southernfood.about.com
• Subfolders - the folders behind a domain address
  • Examples of subfolders
    • www.seomoz.org/blog/
    • searchengineland.com/columns/
    • postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/
    • southernfood.about.com/library/

Search engines have metrics that they apply to pages, such as PageRank, and metrics they apply to subdomains and root domains (including things like TrustRank, various quality scores, domain level link metrics like Domain mozRank, etc.). Through years of experience, observation and testing, SEOs have observed some very steady patterns of behavior:

• Individual pages benefit from being on powerful subdomains & root domains. This is why if someone copies your personal blog post on the best way to microwave burritos into Wikipedia, that page will rank far better than yours, even with the exact same content (ignoring the duplicate content issues).
• Subdomains DO NOT always inherit all of the positive metrics and ranking ability of other subdomains on a given root domain.
• Some subdomains GET NO BENEFIT from the root domain they’re on. These include sites like Wordpress.com, Blogspot.com, Typepad.com, and many others where anyone can create their own subdomain to begin publishing.
• Subfolders DO appear to receive all the benefits of the subdomain they’re on and content/pages behave remarkably similarly no matter what subfolder under a given subdomain they’re put in.
• Good internal and cross linking CAN HELP to give share the positive metrics from one subdomain to another (but not always and not perfectly).

For these reasons, if you’re seeking to maximize your ranking ability for a given piece of content, it’s my personal belief that you should, most of the time, keep it on 1 subdomain under 1 root domain (but feel free to use subfolders as it makes sense). Starting a blog? I almost always recommend yoursite.com/blog over blog.yoursite.com. Want to launch a new section of content? Use yoursite.com/newstuff rather than newstuff.yoursite.com.

However, there are exceptions…

When to Use a Subdomain

Subdomains can sometimes make sense when:

• You already have two pages from your main domain ranking for a particular search query (and are trying to saturate the search results with your listings). This works because Google will show a maximum of two URLs on a given search results pages from a given subdomain, but may show more from a given root domain if there are multiple subdomains. You can see Aaron Wall doing a great job with these technique here.
• You have a particular keyword you want to rank for that you’re using in the subdomain (or a combination keyword phrase that the subdomain + root domain tie together perfectly) and you’re doing specific targeting with the tactic of letting the copy/paste of the URL serve as ideal anchor text. For example, if I owned watch-reviews.com and used subdomains for specific brands like rolex.watch-reviews.com knowing that many people would link using the subdomain URL and give my page that perfect anchor text.
• You already have a subdomain that’s working well, ranking well and would be a pain to move. In the past, we’ve done some work to redirect subdomains back to subfolders on a root domain and seen considerable rises in traffic & rankings, but this is almost universally for root domains with large numbers of subdomains. If you just have 1-5 subdomains and they’re performing well, it’s not a huge concern (though it might warrant testing a redirect on one just to see).

There are other situations, some of them more technical in nature, where it can make sense, but the best practice is to use one subdomain on a root domain for all your content. In my experience, unless you’ve got some serious SEO savvy and know exactly what you’re doing and why, this should be the default.

When it Pays to Use Microsites

Like subdomains, microsites, too have their place:

• If you’re launching a product/service/business that you want to potentially sell off or brand completely differently from your main site/business, microsites or even separate macro-sites make sense. It’s easy to sell off a domain and the business beneath it, but much harder if it’s in a subdomain or subfolder.
• If you’re releasing a product/service/promotion that you don’t want people to know is associated with your site/brand and are prepared for the fact that your existing root domain / subdomain metrics won’t help that content rank in the engines.
• If you have an exact match domain name for a particular keyword you’re targeting, microsites can be powerful. Google’s preference for and ranking boost given to exact-match domains is a very powerful tool to use for SEO.
• If you’re pushing a content piece that has little to no association with your site and you don’t want the potential branding confusion or commercial association to hinder link & user growth. Just be wary - if you do this a lot and it’s clearly as a method to attract links that you’ll then 301 redirect back to your site, you can cross the “spam/manipulation” line with the engines and lose out on the value.

There are probably several other good uses for microsites and times when it pays to apply them, but they tend to fit with some of the above principles. The big trouble with microsites is that they inherit none of the trust, authority, ranking power, consideration, etc. that search engines give to established, well-linked properties. Mistaking a link between two domains as a signal that the engines can interpret to mean “oh, these two sites are owned by the same company, and since I trust that one, I’ll trust this one” can make for very unhappy execs when it comes time to see the new project’s metrics.

As always, I’m looking forward to your opinions and experiences on this topic.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Read Original: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seomoz/~3/526166490/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

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From: feedburner.com

Posted by randfish

Last week, I did a Whiteboard Friday, The Microsite Mistake, in which I called out a practice I see as potentially detimental to SEO - using a separate domain to accumulate links for your content site. I was not arguing against all microsite strategies or all domain separations or even all subdomains, just pointing out that this particular usage wasn’t a very logical one. Then came the comments…

Don’t get me wrong - I absolutely love the vibrancy and passion and level of engagement from all our readers and commenters, particularly those that disagree. Honestly, I believe that it is when we disagree and confront one another in positive, constructive ways that we learn the most so please, keep it up! In this instance, though, the comments weren’t a particularly good place for me to address all the many thoughts that arose - that takes a post, and here it is.

Root domains vs. Subdomains vs. Subfolders

• Root Domains - the domain name you need to buy/register with a TLD extension
  • Examples of root domains
    • *.seomoz.org
    • *.searchengineland.com
    • *.blogspot.com
    • *.about.com
• Subdomains - the “third level” domain name; these are free to create under any root domain you own/control
  • Examples of subdomains
    • www.seomoz.org
    • searchengineland.com (yes! even without a third-level name it falls under our definition of a subdomain in this application)
    • postsecret.blogspot.com
    • southernfood.about.com
• Subfolders - the folders behind a domain address
  • Examples of subfolders
    • www.seomoz.org/blog/
    • searchengineland.com/columns/
    • postsecret.blogspot.com/2009/
    • southernfood.about.com/library/

Search engines have metrics that they apply to pages, such as PageRank, and metrics they apply to subdomains and root domains (including things like TrustRank, various quality scores, domain level link metrics like Domain mozRank, etc.). Through years of experience, observation and testing, SEOs have observed some very steady patterns of behavior:

• Individual pages benefit from being on powerful subdomains & root domains. This is why if someone copies your personal blog post on the best way to microwave burritos into Wikipedia, that page will rank far better than yours, even with the exact same content (ignoring the duplicate content issues).
• Subdomains DO NOT always inherit all of the positive metrics and ranking ability of other subdomains on a given root domain.
• Some subdomains GET NO BENEFIT from the root domain they’re on. These include sites like Wordpress.com, Blogspot.com, Typepad.com, and many others where anyone can create their own subdomain to begin publishing.
• Subfolders DO appear to receive all the benefits of the subdomain they’re on and content/pages behave remarkably similarly no matter what subfolder under a given subdomain they’re put in.
• Good internal and cross linking CAN HELP to give share the positive metrics from one subdomain to another (but not always and not perfectly).

For these reasons, if you’re seeking to maximize your ranking ability for a given piece of content, it’s my personal belief that you should, most of the time, keep it on 1 subdomain under 1 root domain (but feel free to use subfolders as it makes sense). Starting a blog? I almost always recommend yoursite.com/blog over blog.yoursite.com. Want to launch a new section of content? Use yoursite.com/newstuff rather than newstuff.yoursite.com.

However, there are exceptions…

When to Use a Subdomain

Subdomains can sometimes make sense when:

• You already have two pages from your main domain ranking for a particular search query (and are trying to saturate the search results with your listings). This works because Google will show a maximum of two URLs on a given search results pages from a given subdomain, but may show more from a given root domain if there are multiple subdomains. You can see Aaron Wall doing a great job with these technique here.
• You have a particular keyword you want to rank for that you’re using in the subdomain (or a combination keyword phrase that the subdomain + root domain tie together perfectly) and you’re doing specific targeting with the tactic of letting the copy/paste of the URL serve as ideal anchor text. For example, if I owned watch-reviews.com and used subdomains for specific brands like rolex.watch-reviews.com knowing that many people would link using the subdomain URL and give my page that perfect anchor text.
• You already have a subdomain that’s working well, ranking well and would be a pain to move. In the past, we’ve done some work to redirect subdomains back to subfolders on a root domain and seen considerable rises in traffic & rankings, but this is almost universally for root domains with large numbers of subdomains. If you just have 1-5 subdomains and they’re performing well, it’s not a huge concern (though it might warrant testing a redirect on one just to see).

There are other situations, some of them more technical in nature, where it can make sense, but the best practice is to use one subdomain on a root domain for all your content. In my experience, unless you’ve got some serious SEO savvy and know exactly what you’re doing and why, this should be the default.

When it Pays to Use Microsites

Like subdomains, microsites, too have their place:

• If you’re launching a product/service/business that you want to potentially sell off or brand completely differently from your main site/business, microsites or even separate macro-sites make sense. It’s easy to sell off a domain and the business beneath it, but much harder if its in a subdomain or subfolder.
• If you’re releasing a product/service/promotion that you don’t want people to know is associated with your site/brand and are prepared for the fact that your existing root domain / subdomain metrics won’t help that content rank in the engines.
• If you have an exact match domain name for a particular keyword you’re targeting, microsites can be powerful. Google’s preference for and ranking boost given to exact-match domains is a very powerful tool to use for SEO.
• If you’re pushing a content piece that has little to no association with your site and you don’t want the potential branding confusion or commercial association to hinder link & user growth. Just be wary - if you do this a lot and it’s clearly as a method to attract links that you’ll then 301 redirect back to your site, you can cross the “spam/manipulation” line with the engines and lose out on the value.

There are probably several other good uses for microsites and times when it pays to apply them, but they tend to fit with some of the above principles. The big trouble with microsites is that they inherit none of the trust, authority, ranking power, consideration, etc. that search engines give to established, well-linked properties. Mistaking a link between two domains as a signal that the engines can interpret to mean “oh, these two sites are owned by the same company, and since I trust that one, I’ll trust this one” can make for very unhappy execs when it comes time to see the new project’s metrics.

As always, I’m looking forward to your opinions and experiences on this topic.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Read Original: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/seomoz/~3/526166490/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

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From: sitepronews.com

The latest report by Click Forensics shows that click fraud is once again on the rise, jumping from 16% in the 3rd quarter of 2008 to 17.1% in the 4th quarter. More alarming, however, is the continuing growth of Botnet click fraud which has grown steadily from 9% in the first quarter of 2007 to 31.4% in the 4th [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Click Fraud on the Rise Again

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/01/29/click-fraud-on-the-rise-again/

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From: sitepronews.com

Rumors seem to be making the rounds again about a possible eBay sale of Skype. With Skype revenues up and eBay revenues down, a sale doesn’t seem out of the question especially when it’s obvious Skype has never really fit well with the eBay business model.
Google buying Skype has been reported before, but the latest [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Rumor Has it - Google to Buy Skype?

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/01/29/rumor-has-it-google-to-buy-skype/

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From: searchenginewatch.com

AOL will cut 10% of its workforce, according to Kara Swisher. That amounts to 700 employees.

The cuts will attempt to focus efforts in New York City, part of a gradual attempt to headquarter there. That will mean consolidation in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, and the DC suburb of Dulles, site of the original HQ. It will also scaled down international business, which hasn’t served them well.

Last year, parent company Time Warner announced that it would split AOL into two: one part internet access and one part search/media. Time Warner has been attempting to forge a merger or sale with Yahoo for nearly a year now.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/525650109/090128-143015

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From: searchenginewatch.com

The finalists have been announced in the Second Annual SEMMYs Awards recognizing the best blog posts in search marketing, social media and related areas. Congratulations go out to all the nominees, and especially to our own Search Engine Watch bloggers and experts who were nominated:

Local Search:

Google’s Carter Maslan and Eric Enge talk Local Search, Eric Enge, Stone Temple Consulting

Design & Usability:

Three Reasons Your Visitors Don’t Convert to Leads, Bryan Eisenberg, ClickZ

25 Design Best Practices for Your Small Business Web Site, Carrie Hill, Search Engine Watch

Please head over to the SEMMYs site and vote for your favorites.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/525631099/090128-142054

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From: searchenginewatch.com

When it comes to privacy - and overall service/product offering - there is a big difference in how Google and Yahoo relate to searchers and customers. Google often strikes me as user-centered while Yahoo should seriously consider checking out Bryan Eisenberg’s We-We.

Today is Data Privacy Day and the way Google and Yahoo are commemorating the awareness campaign brings those differences to light even more.

With Yahoo, it seems like they’re for the user. They blogged a bunch of tips that users can do to protect their own data. But Google inserts a different tone: What *they* are doing for users.

Sure, Google shares tips for users, too, but they mix it with showing the great lengths they are going to, to ensure privacy on their end.

Yahoo’s tone, of course, is symptomatic of a greater problem of not putting the user first. They’re lashing out at bloggers for their own rule change in their search marketing service and overestimated themselves in the past year during the Microsoft acquisition attempt.

Of course, there’s a new sheriff in town in Carol Bartz, the new CEO. Let’s hope for Yahoo’s sake that she can create a new tone and remind the purple people that the success of her company depends on putting the user first.

Read Original: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/525605340/090128-125109

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From: sitepronews.com

The first and most important point to understand is whenever you sell, or give away any item online, you MUST get your customer’s name (first name will be fine) together with their email address.
So before you allow a new customer to download, for instance, a free e-book, they have to supply you with their name [...]

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Newbies Hints and Tips : Building Your Opt-in List

Read Original: http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/01/28/newbies-hints-and-tips-building-your-opt-in-list/

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