www.effiewebdesigns.com

Where Did My Site Go?

2009-01-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

Where Did My Site Go?
by Larisa Thomason,
Senior Web Analyst,
NetMechanic, Inc.

It's every webmaster's nightmare. One day your site is steadily climbing in the search engine rankings and building solid link popularity. But the next week, you find that it has either vanished entirely from the search index or the rank has dropped so low that nobody will ever find it. Here are some hints to help you find, fix, and hopefully avoid this traumatic situation.

Check Your Server
First, try to access your site online and make sure the server is up. This may seem really obvious, but just ask anyone who works in a tech support center how many calls they field from confused customers whose computers, scanners, etc. don't work. Not because the products are defective, but because they need to be plugged in first!

Most Web hosting companies boast at least a reliable "99% uptime," but perhaps the search engine spider cruised by during that crucial 1% and found nothing. Quite a few human visitors may have had the same experience. Once a page is dropped, it stays gone until the spider revisits your site. Search Engine Starter lets you easily deep submit dropped pages, but remember that it may be months before the spider crawls by again!

Since you can't possibly sit and monitor your server 24 hours a day, NetMechanic's Server Check Pro tool will do it for you and alert you by pager or email if your server isn't responding. A server problem is always the first thing to check because correcting it is usually as easy as making a phone call to your hosting company. That's a lot easier than redesigning your site.

Review Your Robots.txt File
The robots.txt file tells spiders which pages they're allowed to visit and lists those that are off limits. Have you made any changes to the file recently? If so, you may have inadvertently closed the site to one or more search engine spiders. Or, you may have placed it in the wrong directory and the spider couldn't find it.

Review this excellent discussion of the robots.txt file to learn more about its important function.

Review Your Web Host's Terms Of Service
Perhaps your site has moved into a "bad neighborhood." That's search engine-speak for a server that hosts either adult sites or sites with a reputation for spamming search engines. Search companies don't bother to ask why your site is hanging out with these unsavory elements: they just ban the server's IP address entirely.

So if you're having a problem getting indexed, check your server logs to see if any search engine spiders have visited. The online Search Engine Dictionary maintains a list of spider bot names so you can check to see who has been by. If you've submitted and waited months without a single visit, then perhaps your site is hosted in the wrong place.

Check your Web hosting company's terms of service (TOS) agreement to see if they allow adult or gambling sites. Both have a reputation for being inveterate search engine spammers (even though not all are). It could be that the company began allowing those sites after you signed up and the search engines have caught on and banned the IP address.

In this case, your only real recourse is to move your site to a new hosting company. Refer to our Seven Questions To Ask Your Web Host article for tips on evaluating hosting companies. It is possible to appeal your ban with a particular engine, but that process could take months and cost you a lot of visitors.

Have You Paid Your Bills?
If you're using a pay for placement (like Overture) or pay for indexing (like Inktomi), or pay for inclusion (like Yahoo) service, make sure your payments are up to date. Check your email for notifications from the company.

Many webmasters maintain a separate email account for domain renewal, search engine and directory submission, and other related site issues. It's easy - but dangerous - to forget to check that address regularly. Most free email providers either close or delete the mail from inactive accounts and accounts may be termed "inactive" if you fail to check them at least once every 30 days.

Fortunately, this is the easiest problem to fix. Login to your account, make your payment, and your site is back in the index!

Have All The Pages Disappeared?
Well, now we're getting to the hard stuff. The first four suggestions pointed to outside sources that could cause problems. But it's just as likely that the problem is with your Web site content itself.

Before you change a thing though, check to see if every single page of your site has been deleted from the index. Most likely there's a problem with just a few pages. That points to an algorithm update at the search engine.

The "algorithm" is the super-secret formula each search engine uses to rank and/or penalize Web sites. Search engines change them constantly to thwart spammers and to provide more relevant results to searchers. Each time the algorithm changes, your page rank may change too.

You'll have to look at your page content and HTML code to determine which design or coding technique is causing the problem. Compare the dropped pages (or those whose rank dropped precipitously) with your high-ranking pages. Maybe you'll see that the dropped pages lack header tags or ALT text on images. Perhaps the pages have very little text content. Look the dropped pages over carefully and try to find a common element.

Evaluate Your Site Content
Let NetMechanic's HTML Toolbox tool scan the problem pages before you spend hours combing through your code. It will identify simple coding errors that may not affect page display in a browser, but may keep the search engine spider from indexing all of the page's content.

Once you have an error-free page, check for other issues that can also affect search engine rank.

Before and After: If you kept a backup copy of the site, compare the pages before the change and after. That terrific new design you implemented may be shutting visitors out instead of drawing them in.

Server Redirects: Try to avoid META refresh tags. Some spam sites lure traffic by purchasing expired domain names that have a decent search engine rank and backlinks. Then, they use a META refresh to direct the unsuspecting visitor to their spam site. Search engines are wise to this tactic and may penalize sites that use META refresh tags.

It's much safer to use an HTTP header 301 (permanent redirect) when you need to change a page location. Check with your Web host to see if you have access to HTTP header information.

Keyword Stuffing: Yes, it's important to select the best keywords and keyword phrases for your site and use them inside header text, ALT tags, and page content. But it's easy to get too much of a good thing. Search engine algorithms penalize sites that over-use keyword phrases.

Unfortunately, it's hard to know if you've used a phrase too often or not often enough. NetMechanic's Page Primer tool will calculate your page's keyword density score and alert you if there's a problem.

Link Farming? Remember the importance of keeping your site out of a "bad neighborhood?" Well, it's just as critical to avoid linking to sites in bad neighborhoods or to sites that are totally unrelated to your site's topic.
Read more about the dangers of link farming in our April, 2002 Webmaster Tip.

A great way to avoid these types of problems is to use NetMechanic's handy, affordable coding and search engine tools. Even if you've made a simple change, always use HTML Toolbox to check the changed page for errors.

Then use NetMechanic's Page Primer tool. It will scan your pages for problems and provide engine-specific tips to improve page rank. You'll know if you've used your keywords too much (or too little), if there's enough content, or if you've inadvertently used some design technique (like hidden text) that got you banned.

effiewebdesigns.com

How To Pick Your Keywords

2009-01-28T11:00:00.001-08:00

How To Pick Your Keywords
by Larisa Thomason,
Sr. Web Analyst
NetMechanic, Inc.

Relevant, targeted keywords can get you to the top of search engine rankings and help you attract visitors interested in your web site's content and products. When your customers enter keywords to search, do they find you - or your competitors?

Learn how to choose the best keywords for your site.

Keywords Reflect Your Site's Focus
Develop your keyword strategy during the site design process when you are already focused on how to communicate the purpose of your Web site. Selecting your keywords is much like writing an extremely short mission statement. Ask yourself several questions:

What is the site's focus?
Why is the site's information valuable?
Who is your audience?
The answers to those questions will help you select appropriate keywords because they force you to think about how your site's content serves its intended audience. If you already have an established business (online or not), go one step further and ask your customers what words they would use to find you. Don't limit your keywords to your products; people visit your site looking for information too.

For instance, suppose you sell home ice cream making supplies and attract visitors with interesting content about ice cream in general - like ice cream recipes. So your keywords wouldn't only be product-oriented (ice cream maker, rock salt, etc), you would also include keywords and phrases that describe your content (ice cream recipes, history of ice cream, etc.).

Research Keyword Popularity
Now you should have quite a few keywords and keyword phrases that succinctly describe your product or service. You're ready to research their effectiveness by answering 2 questions:

How many other sites use the same keywords?
How many people actually search on those keywords?
First, select several top search engines and find out how many results each of your keywords or phrases return. If you have a number of keywords and phrases to research, consider making a simple spreadsheet to easily organize your information.

Search Term AltaVista Go/Infoseek Lycos Google
ice cream 419,374 99,760 541,448 763,000
ice cream recipes 1458 359 779 1100
okra ice cream 0 0 0 6

Overly broad keywords rarely work well. With "ice cream" as a keyword, your site competes with many thousands of other sites for attention. However, the more targeted "ice cream recipes" phrase increases your chance of appearing near the top of the results list. If you really want to get specific, your site would always be at the top of a search on "okra ice cream" - if any users were to actually search on it.

Find out what keywords people actually use to query search engines before you make a final selection. NetMechanic's Search Engine Power Pack includes a keyword popularity tool that tells you how many queries are made each month at the popular Yahoo/Overture.com search engine. You'll see how many people searched for a keyword, and all variations of that keyword.

Include Keywords On Your Page
Once you've decided which keywords are appropriate for your site, the hard work begins. You have to integrate them into your site's content in a credible way. Here are a few basic techniques to try:

META Tags: Insert a META KEYWORD tag into the HEAD section of your document and list all your keywords. While you should use this tag on every page of your site, you don't have to use the same keywords on each page.
Misspelled Names: If you're using a keyword that's often misspelled, include that misspelling as a keyword - but not as part of your content!
Plural Terms: Add plural forms to your keywords and using both singular and plural terms in your content. Most people use plural search terms because they hope to receive a list of results and not a single site.
Keyword-rich Content: Use your keywords early and often in your page content. Merely including them in the META tag is not enough; search engines assume the terms are more relevant and important if they're used in the content as well.
Don't try to fool the search engines by repeating keywords in a meaningless way (ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, ice cream) or by using popular keywords that don't pertain to your content. They're wise to these spam techniques and often ban sites that use them. If a keyword is really pertinent, you should be able to legitimately include it several times on the page.

A Delicate Balance
Are the keywords you chose during design still effective? Maybe not. Search engines index new Web sites every day; you have to work to stand out in the crowd. Be prepared to modify your keywords as your site and competition changes. NetMechanic's Search Engine Tracker makes that task easier by monitoring your keyword ranking on search engines and emailing the results to you.

Keyword selection is a delicate balancing act that begins during design and continues as long as your site is posted. It's can be time-consuming, but it's also critically important to your site's success.

effiewebdesigns.com

How To Use HTML Meta Tags

2009-01-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

Want to get a top ranking in search engines? No problem! All you need to do is add a few magical "meta tags" to your web pages, and you'll skyrocket to the top of the listings.

If only it were so easy. Let's make it clear:

Meta tags are not a magic solution.
Meta tags are not a magic solution.
Meta tags are not a magic solution.
Meta tags have never been a guaranteed way to gain a top ranking on crawler-based search engines. Today, the most valuable feature they offer the web site owner is the ability to control to some degree how their web pages are described by some search engines. They also offer the ability to prevent pages from being indexed at all. This page explores these and other meta tag-related features in more depth.

Meta Tag Overview
What are meta tags? They are information inserted into the "head" area of your web pages. Other than the title tag (explained below), information in the head area of your web pages is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Instead, meta information in this area is used to communicate information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what "character set" to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.

Let's see two common types of meta tags, then we'll discuss exactly how they are used in more depth:

In the example above, you can see the beginning of the page's "head" area as noted by the tag -- it ends at the portion shown as .

Meta tags go in between the "opening" and "closing" HEAD tags. Shown in the example is a TITLE tag, then a META DESCRIPTION tag, then a META KEYWORDS tag. Let's talk about what these do.

The Title Tag
The HTML title tag isn't really a meta tag, but it's worth discussing in relation to them. Whatever text you place in the title tag (between the and portions as shown in the example) will appear in the reverse bar of someone's browser when they view the web page. For instance, within the title tag of this page that you are reading is this text:

How To Use HTML Meta Tags

If you look at the reverse bar in your browser, then you should see that text being used, similar to this:

Some browsers also supplement whatever you put in the title tag by adding their own name, as you can see Microsoft's Internet Explorer doing in the picture above.

The title tag is also used as the words to describe your page when someone adds it to their "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" lists. For instance, if you added this page to your Favorites in Internet Explorer, it would show up like this:

How did that little Search Engine Watch logo also show up? Everyone always asks. The article below provides more help:

Creating Your Own Favicon.ico Icon For IE5
Web Developer's Journal, March 7, 2000
http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/favicon.html

But what about search engines! The title tag is crucial for them. The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page (see the Search Engine Placement Tips section for more details). In addition, all major crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings.

For example, this is how Teoma lists the page you are reading:

You can see that the text "How To Use HTML Meta Tags" is used as the hyperlinked title of this page's listed in Teoma's results.

In review, think about the key terms you'd like your page to be found for in crawler-based search engines, then incorporate those terms into your title tag in a short, descriptive fashion. That text will then be used as your title in crawler-based search engines, as well as the title in bookmarks and in browser reverse bars.

The Meta Description Tag
The meta description tag allows you to influence the description of your page in the crawlers that support the tag (these are listed on the Search Engine Features page).

Look back at the example of a meta tag. See the first meta tag shown, the one that says "name=description"? That's the meta description tag. The text you want to be shown as your description goes between the quotation marks after the "content=" portion of the tag (generally, 200 to 250 characters may be indexed, though only a smaller portion of this amount may be displayed).

For this page you are reading, I would like it described in a search engine's listings like this:

This tutorial explains how to use HTML meta tags, with links
to meta tag generators and builders. From SearchEngineWatch.com,
a guide to search engine submission and registration.

Will this happen? Not with every search engine. For example, Google ignores the meta description tag and instead will automatically generate its own description for this page. Others may support it partially. For instance, let's see again how this page is listed in Teoma:

You can see that the first portion of the page's description comes from the meta description tag, then there's an ellipse (.), and the remaining portion is drawn from the body copy of the page itself.

In review, it is worthwhile to use the meta description tag for your pages, because it gives you some degree of control with various crawlers. An easy way to do this often is to take the first sentence or two of body copy from your web page and use that for the meta description content.

The Meta Keywords Tag
The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. How does this help you? Well, for most major crawlers, it doesn't. That's because most crawlers now ignore the tag. The few supporting it can be found on the Search Engine Features page).

The meta keywords tag is sometimes useful as a way to reinforce the terms you think a page is important for ON THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT. For instance, if you had a page about stamp collecting -- AND you say the words stamp collecting at various places in your body copy -- then mentioning the words "stamp collecting" in the meta keywords tag MIGHT help boost your page a bit higher for those words.

Remember, if you don't use the words "stamp collecting" on the page at all, then just adding them to the meta keywords tag is extremely unlikely to help the page do well for the term. The text in the meta keywords tag, FOR THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT, works in conjunction with the text in your body copy.

The meta keyword tag is also sometimes useful as a way to help your page come up for synonyms or unusual words that don't appear on the page itself. For instance, let's say you had a page all about the "Penny Black" stamp. You never actually say the word "collecting" on this page. By having the word in your meta keywords tag, then you may help increase the odds of coming up if someone searched for "penny black stamp collecting." Of course you would greater increase the odds if you just used the word "collecting" in the body copy of the page itself.

Here's another example. Let's say you have a page about horseback riding, and you've written your page using "horseback" as a single word. You realize that some people may instead search for "horse back riding," with "horse back" in their searches being two separate words. If you listed these words separately in your meta keywords tag, THEN MAYBE FOR THE FEW CRAWLERS THAT SUPPORT IT, your page might rank better for "horse back" riding. Sadly, the best way to ensure this would be to write your pages using both "horseback riding" and "horse back riding" in the text -- or perhaps on some of your pages, use the single word version and on others, the two word version.

I'm using all these capital letters on purpose. Far too many people new to search engine optimization obsess with the meta keywords tag. FEW crawlers support it. For those that do, it MIGHT! MAYBE! PERHAPS! POSSIBLY! BUT WITH NO GUARANTEE! help improve the ranking of your page. It also may very well do nothing for your page at all. In fact, repeat a particular word too often in a meta keywords tag and you could actually harm your page's chances of ranking well. Because of this, I strongly suggest that those new to search engine optimization not even worry about the tag at all.

Even those who are experienced in search engine optimization may decide it is no longer worth using the tags. Search Engine Watch doesn't. Any meta keywords tags you find in the site were written in the past, when the keywords tag was more important. There's no harm in leaving up existing tags you may have written, but going forward, writing new tags probably isn't worth the trouble. The articles below explore this in more detail:

Death Of A Meta Tag
The Search Engine Report, Oct. 1, 2002

Meta Tags Revisited
The Search Engine Report, Dec. 5, 2002

Still want to use the meta keywords tag? OK. Look back at the opening example. See the second meta tag shown, the one that says "name=keywords"? That's the meta keywords tag. The keywords you want associated with your page go between the quotation marks after the "content=" portion of the tag.

Inktomi says that you should include up to 25 words or phrases, with each word or phrase separated by commas. More advice from Inktomi can be found on its Content Policy FAQ.

FYI, in the past, when the tag was supported by other search engines, they generally indexed up to 1,000 characters of text and commas were not required.

Meta Robots Tag
One other meta tag worth mentioning is the robots tag. This lets you specify that a particular page should NOT be indexed by a search engine. To keep spiders out, simply add this text between your head tags on each page you don't want indexed. The format is shown below (click on the picture if you want to copy and past the HTML for your own use):

You do NOT need to use variations of the meta robots tag to help your pages get indexed. They are unnecessary. By default, a crawler will try to index all your web pages and will try to follow links from one page to another.

Most major search engines support the meta robots tag. However, the robots.txt convention of blocking indexing is more efficient, as you don't need to add tags to each and every page. See the Search Engines Features page for more about the robots.txt file. If you use do a robots.txt file to block indexing, there is no need to also use meta robots tags.

The meta robots tag also has some extensions offered by particular search engines to prevent indexing of multimedia content. The article below talks about this in more depth and provides some links to help files. Search Engine Watch members should follow the link from the article to the members-only edition for extended help on the subject.

Image Search Faces Renewed Legal Challenge
The Search Engine Report, August 22, 2001

Other Meta Tags
There are many other meta tags that exist beyond those explored in this article. For example, if you were to view the source code of this web page, you would find "author," "channel" and "date" meta tags. These mean nothing to web-wide crawlers such as Google. They are specifically for an internal search engine used by Search Engine Watch to index its own content.

There are also "Dublin Core" meta tags. The intent is that these can be used for both "internal" search engines and web-wide ones. However, no major web-wide search engine supports these tags. More about them can be found below:

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Dublin Core - Tagging the Web for better search and retrieval
WebReference.com, Nov. 5, 2000

How about the meta revisit tag? This tag is not recognized by the major search engines as a method of telling them how often to automatically return. They have never supported it.

In Conclusion
Overall, just remember this. Of all the meta tags you may see out there:

Meta Robots: This tag enjoys full support, but you only need it if you DO NOT want your pages indexed.

Meta Description: This tag enjoys much support, and it is well worth using.

Meta Keywords: This tag is only supported by some major crawlers and probably isn't worth the time to implement.

Meta Everything Else: Any other meta tag you see is ignored by the major crawlers, though they may be used by specialized search engines.

More Resources
At the bottom of this page are more resources about meta tags, including tutorials and meta tag building applications. But first.

If you've been following the "Next" buttons to read the numbered sections of the Search Engine Submission Tips guide in order, you've now reached the last page. Congratulations!

There's still more information you might find helpful, however. Please review the rest of the articles on the SEM Basics section for additional assistance with search engine marketing issues.

In addition, do consider becoming a Search Engine Watch member, for access to even more information on search engine marketing issues.

Now, here are those additional meta tag resources and articles.

Meta Tag Generators, Builders and Evaluators
SiteUp's Meta-Tag Generator
This is a software-based package for Windows that creates meta tags. It is a freeware package -- no registration fee required.

Meta Tag Builder
This form allows you to create very complicated meta tags using much more than the keywords and description tags, if you wish. Note that it will place a commented credit line into the tag. This can easily be removed, if you wish.

effiewebdesigns.com

effiewebdesigns.com

2009-01-25T07:48:00.001-08:00

Link Building Outside the Box

2009-01-24T05:46:00.000-08:00

If you’ve used traditional link building strategies and find yourself running out of ideas, maybe it’s time to do a little brainstorming. To help you get started, this article will clue you in to some underused but powerful ideas for generating buzz and traffic for your web site. Feel free to mix and match or use them as jumping-off points.
I owe a lot of the ideas I’m about to describe to Kim Roach at Zany Pixel. Roach wrote an amazing article on unusual link building strategies. I won’t have room to examine them all here, so I urge you to pay a visit to the site. You may come away with just the idea you need to really kick-start your traffic.

My first idea, however, comes from Hamlet Batista. He advocates giving something away. Giving goodies away is a time-honored tradition when it comes to marketing, from the little prizes in cereal boxes to the swag-filled days before the first dot-com bust. But how is giving something away going to get you links? It depends on how you do it.

Say you run a content-based site that features reviews. If you’ve just run a really good review of something – a restaurant perhaps, or a video game, or an electronic device – why not contact the manufacturer (or game designer, or restaurant owner) and let them know? They’ll be delighted to hear about the good review…and if you suggest that they accept a virtual “badge” or “trophy” that links back to the good review on your site, you will more than likely get a very nice one-way link.

This idea can be adapted in a variety of ways. Here’s a spin for not-for-profit educational organizations: in addition to all the educational data you provide on your site, include a number of tests. Let visitors take the tests. If they score particularly high, give them a virtual “award” at the end of the test that they can post to their blog. It gives your site another link, and gets the word out to the blog’s readers. True, not everyone who is online has a blog, but they’re common enough these days to make this worthwhile.

You know about Blogger and WordPress and LiveJournal, of course, and then there are the blogs on social networking sites that aren’t quite as blog-focused. But did you know that you could start a blog on eBay? I didn’t either, but here’s the home page for eBay Blogs.

If you think nobody would use eBay Blogs for anything more than getting the word out about the latest items they’ve posted for sale, think again. SEO expert Jim Boykin started an eBay blog. He has only one entry, but it’s very informative for anyone who is trying to sell goods on eBay and is looking for an edge. The entry links back to his main blog, so anyone who’s really interested can find out a lot more. It’s worth noting, by the way, that eBay apparently doesn’t force bloggers to use the rel=”nofollow” tag. Just keep your desired keywords/anchor text in mind and get to work.

I talked about giving virtual trophies away earlier. Trophies tend to imply contests of some kind, and holding a contest in your blog is a great way to attract traffic and links. There are even specific sites set up where you can promote your blogging contest. Roach lists no fewer than 15 sites, including Contest Blogger, The Prize Blog, SYC and My Blog Contests.

Don’t underestimate the potential benefits of running a contest on your blog. Ben Cook wrote an article a few months ago in which he explained the benefits of the contest he’d just finished running in his blog. The contest’s explicit purpose was building links to help push his site up in the SERPs. Thanks to the contest, he got his site ranked as high as fourth for his chosen key phrase in Yahoo. At the time he wrote the article, he’d settled down to 46th in Google and 37th in Yahoo for the phrase, but that gave him a good base to build on. The contest also brought hundreds of visitors to his site at a time when it was less than three months old.

If you want to inspire some interesting responses and conversation along with those links, try to think of a way to make the contest just a little off-beat. Make your contestants work, but not too hard. Photo contests seem more likely to go viral and inspire lots of entries than other kinds of contests, perhaps because digital photography has made it so easy these days. Encourage your entrant to send in a short description along with the photo – search engines can’t see images without something in the alt tag, but they can crawl any other text you put on the page, so this way you get relevant text along with the image.

PageRank: Acting Brand New

2009-01-24T05:40:00.000-08:00

PageRank: Acting Brand New
(Page 1 of 4 )

Late last year something went down in the SEO world, literally. It was big and if you are into Internet marketing you would have noticed it. The Google PageRank of large numbers of publishers (gasp!), the ultimate navel gazing tool, took a big hit. Some dropped by two points and some by as much as 5. Should you care? Does it matter? And what is this PageRank business anyway? Keep reading to find out.
PageRank is Google's view of the importance of this Page

Google Toolbar

I will offer a "brief" analysis of a somewhat lengthy problem. Not everybody got hit; just a large enough percentage for the differences to be noticed. First I will define what PageRank is (hopefully in an interesting fashion), then I will critique its use by Internet marketers and SEO practitioners.

To some people the news contained in this article is "extremely" old news. Then again, in January Google updated their PageRank again, as they usually do every three months -- so they are about due once again. It looks as if it is business as usual in the Googleplex and there is little or no fear of another huge PR upheaval as there was in November of last year.

PageRank

PageRank is a patented algorithm written by Larry Page (Page-Rank). It is a trademark registered to Google. It is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. According to Google "PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value." In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links, a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Another thing we should briefly look at is the fact that the PageRank that is most viewed (the green indicator on the toolbar) is an historical indicator that does not change in real time. Instead, it is updated about every three months. Therefore it is only representative of the real Google PageRank at that point in time. According to one blogger, PageRank is one of those things that everyone uses but nobody really understands.

I won't delve too deeply into the mathematics of the algorithm. Anyone who is interested in it should take a look at Wikipedia's page on it. However I will look at how SEO practitioners and Internet marketers used SEO in such a way as to turn PageRank into one of their marketing points, and how eventually it created a competing model against Google's pay-per-click ad model.

Making a MySpace Page for Your Business

2009-01-23T11:49:00.000-08:00

MySpace is all over the news and all over computer screens across America and beyond. In November of 2005, MySpace had 26.7 million users*. Just one year later, an estimated 128 million people were using MySpace, the site that according to Wikipedia “attracts new registrations at a rate of 230,000 per day”. And although teens may appear to be more hip to MySpace lingo, an October 2006 report by comScore Media Metrix notes that “more than half of all MySpace visitors are now age 35 or older.”

If you’re out of the social networking loop, now is the time to get in it. Today’s savvy consumers want products from a business they can trust, learn from, relate to and “be friends” with. MySpace is a potential springboard in lead generation for business owners, especially those that appear to be true friends rather than in-your-face marketers. Your MySpace page can be used to gain ties with other business owners and to promote items or services to prospective customers in a more personal and easily accessible environment.

Signing Up
Signing up at MySpace is easy, and it’s free. Below are some tips for starting a page for your own business and gaining some valuable friendships along the way.

Filling Out Your Basic Info
When creating your MySpace profile, there are some basic fields you must fill out first. The overall goal of using a social networking site is to give your company a personal feel, yet it’s wise to stay neutral on certain issues. A good way to do so is to select the “No Answer” option on those revealing questions. For example, if you’re selling golf balls it’s really not necessary to offer your religion preference to potential clients. If visitors disagree with an answer, that could be the deal breaker. Thus, some things are better left unsaid.
There are some questions, however, that do not provide the “No Answer” option, such as the following:
Under Basic Info: Gender, Date of Birth and Region (State)
Under Background and Lifestyle: Marital Status
As you can tell, MySpace hasn’t exactly made an optimal business page format in forcing a company to provide its gender, zodiac sign and marital status. However, a thing to realize is that while you are using your MySpace page to build a client base and market to your friends, MySpace is using your own page to market to you! The answers you provide help MySpace to target their own advertising messages, which is why some answers require a response.

Your Name and URL
When choosing a name and url (myspace.com/url), you can take two routes. You can either choose the name of your business, or you can use keywords describing the items you sell. To optimize your page, a keyword rich name may be your best bet.

Company Overview, the “About Me” Section
This is your page’s bread and butter. Give a concise overview of your company and how it may benefit your target audience. Use common sense and creativity to spark their interest. Who are you? What do you do? And what may entice me, your potential customer, to become your friend?

Potential Clients, the “Who I’d like to meet” Section
Here you can breakdown your target audience. If your products were talking, who would they like to meet? Water skis would want to meet water sport enthusiasts, high-end dog clothes would want to shake hands with pampered pet owners, and so on. Keep it targeted, yet open enough for any and every potential consumer.

Your Company’s Interests
If you choose to not provide info here, these sections will remain blank. However, if any of these interests may help to build your clientele or add to the appeal of your product offerings, feel free to fill these out. The Interests Section includes: General (which can be a condensed version of the “About Me” section), Music, Movies, Television, Books and Heroes. Use creativity here as well. Remember, you’re adding a friendly feel to your business, so think of what answers may offer some insight into your site’s personality.

Adding Pictures, the “Profile Pic” and “View my Pics” Section
You’ll need a profile pic or your default image will be a static grey icon with the words “No Photo” (not someone many people will want to befriend). When visitors come to your MySpace page, it will be the first thing they see and it will also be the image displayed on your friends MySpace pages. Your image should relate directly with your business. Your best bet would be to use your logo, or another image that will give immediate recognition of your type of business. There is also a “View my pics” section, where additional images can be added. This is a great place to add more of a personal touch to your page. You can add pictures of your employees, things that are of interest to you and other images that may help the consumer feel at home.

Adding Videos
Although it’s a feature not used by many, the Video Section can be a launch pad for some valuable word of mouth. If you create a video that boosts your business while offering something entertaining or educational, it can be picked up and spread by several potential clients. Videos provide a great medium for boosting a brand image, yet are not an essential must-have when starting your page.

Your MySpace Blog
On the right-hand side of your profile, you’ll notice a section for your “Latest Blog Entry”. Blogs are as wide-spread as social networking sites, in offering an informative, personal and entertaining way to provide information about your online business. The titles of your Blog posts also act as links, so providing keyword rich titles can help with Search Engine Optimization in generating more relevant traffic for your business. Use this section for company news, as well as information related to your product offerings. Try to keep this area up-to-date and consistent. For example, if every Monday you list a “Special Deal”, users may be more prone to check this area periodically.

Your MySpace Business Page Layout
This can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be. A basic page can be made with little or no HTML knowledge, which is the route that most small business owners take (BookPeople) while larger companies often stray so far away from the format, you can hardly tell it’s a MySpace page (Adidas).

Here are some quick tips for designing your own page:
-Make your page’s personality match that of your product offerings.
-Keep your page simple. Avoid overloading your site with too many files, as audio and video files take up server space and can slow a page down. If it takes too long to load your page, your potential friends won’t bother waiting around.
-Keep your page current and informative. Give your friends something to come back for. Also, site visitors can see when you last logged on so if it’s been awhile, they’ll be less likely to pay you a visit.

For HTML and CSS coding tips, you can checkout the MySpace Profile Support section. There are also several sites that offer free MySpace Layouts, but do your research to check their safety as many are known to carry potential viruses.

Making Friends, the “Friend Space” Section
Friends are potential clients. An ultimate MySpace page would be one in which you were sought out to become a friend. However, if you’re a small business with limited exposure, a more realistic approach would be to seek others out instead. You can try a basic MySpace Search to find those that may be interested in your business, while you’re more likely to find targeted consumers by searching MySpace Groups. Once you request someone as a friend, they’ll receive a “Friend Request” in their Inbox. They can then visit your page to determine whether or not to accept (remember that these requests can be accepted, just as easily as they can be denied). In some cases, it may serve you better to send a Friend Request alongside a personalized message. Think about your own experience, and what a page has to possess to appeal to your interest. You should also link to your MySpace page from your online store, to help build a client base of people already interested in your product offerings. Your page will show the public your friend number, so try to show off your popularity by gaining (and keeping) as many friends as you can.

Posting Bulletins and Sending Messages
A Bulletin Post is a great way to message all of your consumers at once, but this tool should never be over-used. Remember the keyword here once more- “friend”. Friends don’t spam (or annoy) other friends. Unlike the real world, your friendship here can quickly be deleted with the click of a mouse. Give your friends something they’d want to read about (new product offerings, news related to items you sell, special deals, etc.) and keep it minimal. Although it must be done one by one, you can also send messages (like emails) to your friends. Again, inform and engage don’t shout or annoy.

Posting Comments
This is another great way to build your clientele. You can use comments to take advantage of pages that are already popular. For example, if you sell golf clubs- post a comment on a popular golf page, and so on. Try to keep your comments relevant, real and unique. You’ll notice a lot of “Thanks for the Add” comments. Like anything else, if you see something too much it becomes wallpaper rather than something of interest. Also avoid blatant advertising. Your profile can be set to approve comments before they post on your page (which is something you should do as well), so easily recognizable ads will likely be deleted. And again, you’re making friends. Throwing ads on someone’s page is not the key to this friendship. Inform and engage. Let’s say you make a Blog Post about “5 Tips to Finding the Perfect Golf Club”. Your comment (on a popular golfing page) can be, “Checkout my blog for tips on finding clubs”. This is something a friend would do, offer helpful advice which may lead to finding the “perfect club” from your own store.

In Closing
When you enter the MySpace world, you’re among thousands of potential leads- all with the same vehicle for giving and acquiring information. Be honest, be personal, be a friend and in turn, your new friends may become your lifelong customers!

*Source: comScore Media Metrix, a division of comScore Networks, Inc.

---> www.effiewebdesigns.com

Why Email Marketing? Five Great Reasons

2009-01-23T09:02:00.000-08:00

Experts and small businesses agree:

“54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts.”
DMA Interactive

1) It’s Inexpensive
Email marketing is an affordable way to stretch a tight marketing budget - and whose isn’t these days? Unlike direct mail, there is virtually no production, materials or postage expense. In addition, there are self-service solutions available that let you eliminate agency creative costs as well. Email marketing is 20 times more cost effective than direct mail, and can cost as little as fractions of a penny per email.

2) It’s Effective
Email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of passively waiting for them to return to your Web site or storefront. You can easily target your emails by source, interest, or list.

Overall, email communications sent to your prospect and customer lists, can single-handedly improve the ROI of all of your lead generation and customer retention programs.

3) It’s Immediate
Email marketing has two great advantages over other marketing vehicles. First, with the self-service tools available, anyone can create and send compelling email newsletters, promotions, announcements or more in hours or days. No agency or production time is required to create and send professional communications. Second, email marketing generates an immediate response. The call to action is clear: “Click here to take advantage of this offer”, or “to learn more about this service”, or to “attend this event”. Initial campaign response generally occurs within 48 hours of the time the email campaign is sent.

4) It’s Measurable
Unlike other marketing vehicles, results from email campaigns are easily measured. Results are reported in terms of “opens”, which report how many people saw your offer or newsletters, Click Through Rates (CTRs), which measure how many people actually clicked on the links in your email, and in a many cases, who actually clicked on those links.

5) It’s Easy
There are Web-based email marketing products for small and medium businesses. Most include professional HTML templates, list segmentation and targeting capabilities, as well as, automatic tracking and reporting. So, you are free to concentrate on your unique message while the rest is done for you.

It is time to put email marketing to work for your business! To get started, check out the Email Marketing Hints & Tips Archives for tips on everything from creating a subject line, to testing and measuring your success.

Contact us anytime with any questions at www.effiewebdesigns.com

Reviving Business-Logo Advice Please

2009-01-22T08:57:00.000-08:00

Know what you want

Be able to express that to a designer

Ask for unlimited revisions and many mockup concepts

Use a reputable company Or a great Designer

Try out the samples agianst business cards. web etc.. make certain it works and try out different color versions.

Make the logo speak for itself, keep it clean and welcoming

You can contact us anytime at www.effiewebdesigns.com

Why do i need a website

2009-01-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

I Need a Website?With the economy at crisis levels, a natural inclination is to tighten belts and avoid extra expenditures. But as markets shrink, it's even more important for your company or organization to attract new business and retain current clients.

So what's the most cost-effective method of promotion? A Web site.

Q: WHY A WEBSITE?A: First of all, the public now expects businesses and organizations to have a Web site -- one that can, at the very least, supply basic information and a means of getting in contact. A Web site has become nearly as essential as a telephone or fax machine or printed brochure.

But apart from fulfilling the public's expectations, a Web site will also help your business increase profits. Increasingly, people search the Web rather than the Yellow Pages when looking for a service or product. Yes, even in Israel.

If they don't find your business represented, they will find your competitor 's.

Q: WHAT CAN A WEBSITE DO FOR ME?A: A few examples of immediate, practical benefits:

Expand the effect of a print ad. Addition of a Web site address to an ad, even a very small one, means that anyone intrigued by the ad can immediately access much greater amounts of information about your company. The effect is heightened when you add suitable photos to your site.

Save time. Much company time and effort is often wasted by repeatedly providing the same information either by phone or in person. Have a section on your site that provides answers to frequently asked questions.

Make it easier for potential customers to find you. Include a detailed road map on your site, and make things even easier for customers by indicating parking lots and bus stops.
Q: WILL A WEBSITE MAKE MY BUSINESS IMMEDIATELY MORE SUCCESSFUL?A: Does a phone, or fax machine or brochure? All are tools for communication and promotion, but need to be used effectively. On the other hand, neglecting to have one of these tools can put your company at a serious disadvantage. No company operates without a phone. A Web site -- and the services it can provide -- is equally essential for a 21st century business.

To get some indication of how immediate your need for a site is, check out the Web presence of your competitors. None of them have Web sites yet? Lucky you -- you've not only got some breathing space, you also have a good shot at being the first to attract new markets. Your competitors already have Web sites? Get to work -- fast.

Q: GIVE ME SOME EXAMPLES OF HOW A WEBSITE WILL HELP MY SPECIFIC BUSINESS:A: The possibilities are limited only by imagination and budget, but following are some benefits that can be provided by even the simplest, most basic "brochure" site:

Restaurant: People choose restaurants not only for their food, but also for their ambiance and convenience.

Show attractive photos of the interior, and sample entrees on a beautifully set table.
Have you had good reviews? Reprint them on your site.
Show your menu.
Advertise special offerings and services such as business lunches, catering, etc.
Post testimonials from satisfied patrons.
Include a printable map, which shows the location of parking and bus stops.
Professional services (attorney, doctor, dentist): For these services, which can't use conventional advertising methods, a Web site is especially valuable. Here is an accepted way of showcasing your areas of specialization. Do you have publications? Cite them. Awards? Display them. Articles or case studies that demonstrate your credentials? Place them online.

Design services (architect, interior designer, home renovator, illustrator, etc.): Here a picture isn't worth a thousand words. It's worth a million. Before & after pictures can tell your story -- without the costs of 4-color printing, plus distribution.

Realty services: Here, too, pictures are a great tool. Show off properties with lots of full-color, large-format photos. Sites are easily kept current with new information and properties.

Retail store: Even if you're not yet ready for the expense of full-blown e-commerce, a site can effectively promote your business. A user-friendly online brochure is easily done -- and saves thousands in printing and mailing costs.

You can publicize sales and special offers.
Looking for employees? Post the positions and let prospects contact you by e-mail.
Post a printable map showing your location.
Customer service is faster and friendlier when customers can contact you immediately, 24 hours a day, by e-mail -- rather than have to wait on the phone, listening to Muzak, and getting more impatient by the second.
Writers:

Post clips with copyright information, and refer editors to this page in your queries.
Promote published books.
Sell your books from your site via an affiliate link to an online seller such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You'll earn up to 15% in referral fees, apart from royalties.
Non-profit organizations: It's important to establish credibility -- especially when you're engaged in fundraising. Document your organization's progress, achievements, contributions. Once your site is launched and properly registered with search engines you may be found by sectors of the public that you'd never have been able to otherwise identify and reach.

Q: WILL I BE ABLE TO AFFORD A WEBSITE?A: Prices vary widely, depending on the specifics of each individual site. But when considering the benefits that even the simplest Web site can provide, the question to ask is less "Can I afford to have a Web site?" than "Can I afford not to have one?"

You can contact us anytime at www.effiewebdesigns.com

Why can't I find my site in Google?

2009-01-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

Dave's Answer:
Without realizing it, you're really asking a huge, critically important question for every business, online or off. What I believe you're really asking is how do I ensure my business is maximally "findable" in the search engines?

There are entire industries that have cropped up to help you answer that question and plenty of books too, including my own highly acclaimed Growing Your Business with Google.

To even start to answer your question, we need to step back and talk about how search engines work and what the search engine developers are trying to accomplish in the first place. Let's start with this statement: The very best search engine would be one where you could have an informative and valuable content page appear for just about any search you could imagine.

Flipping that around, it means that the best way for you to produce a Web page that's going to be highly ranked in the search engine results is to create good content and ensure that you've framed the page and otherwise crafted it to make it as simple as possible for the search engines to quickly ascertain your main topic and keywords.

There are lots of ways to accomplish this goal - as explained in my book, and many other places - but one of the most obvious is to ensure that you talk about your specific subject as frequently as possible. Instead of saying "Holiday Sun Direct" the first time you mention it, then "HSD" or "Sun" subsequently, reiterate the same phrase a few more times. It helps the search engines know that, indeed, "Holiday Sun Direct" is the key topic on the page.

You'll also notice that I say "page", not "site". That's another important idea: search engines no longer pay attention to Web sites, but instead focus on individual pages. This makes sense when you realize just how much variety there can be on larger sites, where they might have completely diverse information in different categories or sections. The focus on pages is profound, because instead of having "one good page" or a "pretty home page", you need to ensure that every single page on your Web site helps clarify your company's offerings, the services you provide, and, of course, the specific topic of that page

If you have further questions or need help please contact us at www.effiewebdesigns.com

Search Engine Optimization Tips For Your Website

2009-01-21T06:52:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization Tips
by Tom Dahm
Misconceptions about search engine optimization are common. One of the most common is that once a site is built and submitted to the search engines, heavy traffic is on its way. Another is that when making a submission to each engine, a site will be registered immediately and will stay listed with that engine for as long as it is in operation. That's just not how it works… not even close!
May 26, 2000

What people need to know is that search engine optimization, which is actually the effective utilization of search engines to draw traffic to a Web site, is an art. It is an ongoing, continuously evolving, high maintenance process that includes the customization of a site for better search engine ranking.

Critical steps to take before submitting
After developing a Web site and selecting the best hosting company, don't rush out and submit it to search engines immediately. A Web site manager would be wise to take a little time to:

Fine tune the TITLE tag to increase traffic to the site

Improving the TITLE tag is one technique that applies to just about all the search engines. The appearance of key words within the page title is one of the biggest factors determining a Web site's score in many engines. It's surprising how many Web sites have simple, unimaginative titles like "Bob's Home Page" that don't utilize keywords at all. In fact, it's not unusual to see entire Web sites that use the same title on every page in the site. Changing page titles to include some of the site's key words can greatly increase the chance that a page will appear with a strong ranking in a query for those key words.

Create gateway pages that are specific to the focus of each site

Key word selection must be done carefully with great forethought and understanding of the search engine's selection criteria for key words. The larger the number of key words that are used, the more the relevance of any one key word is diluted. One way to get around this is to create gateway pages.

Gateway pages are designed specifically for submission to a search engine. They should be tuned with a specific set of key words, boosting the chance that these key words will be given a heavy weight. To do this, several copies of a page should be made, one for each set of key words. These pages will be used as entry points only, to help people find the site, therefore, they don't need to fit within the normal structure of the site. This provides the page developer with greater flexibility in establishing key words and tags that will encourage a stronger ranking with the search engines. Each gateway page then can be submitted separately to the search engines.

Ensuring that site technology won't confuse the search engines

Often the latest technology being built into a site can confuse the search engine spiders. Frames, CGI scripts, image maps and dynamically generated pages are all recently created technology that many spiders don't know how to read. With frames for instance, the syntax of the FRAMESET tag fundamentally changes the structure of an HTML document. This can cause problems for search engines and browsers that don't understand the tag. Some browsers can't find the body of the page and viewing a page through these browsers can create a blank page.

Today only 2% of browsers don't support frames, but many search engine spiders still don't support them. A search engine spider is really just an automated Web browser and like browsers they sometimes lag behind in their support for new HTML tags. This means that many search engines can't spider a site with frames. The spider will index the page, but won't follow the links to the individual frames.

Setting up a NOFRAMES section on the page

Every page that uses frames should include a NOFRAMES section on the page. This tag will not affect the way a page looks but it will help a page get listed with the major search engines. The NOFRAMES tag was invented by Netscape for backward compatibility with browsers that didn't support the FRAME and FRAMESET tags.

Performing a maintenance check

All Web sites should be thoroughly tested using a site maintenance tool in order to catch errors in operation before customers are brought to the site. HTML errors can hinder a search engine spider's ability to index a site, it can also keep a search engine from reading a page or cause it to be viewed in a manner different from how it was intended. In fact, a recent report by Jupiter Communications suggested 46% of users have left a preferred Web site because of a site-related problem. With NetMechanic's HTML Toolbox or another site maintenance tool, all Webmasters, from the novice to the expert can avoid potential visitor disasters due to site errors.

Finding the best submission service

Selecting a search engine submission service requires careful thought and important decisions. Using an auto submission service is a good place to begin. Most search engines like Alta Vista, HotBot and InfoSeek automatically spider a site, index it and hopefully add it to their search database without any human involvement. Some engines, like Yahoo, are done completely with human review and for many reasons are best submitted individually. Chances are good also, that in the first submission a site will be rejected by several of the engines and will need to be individually resubmitted. There are several online resources for auto submissions. The best ones won't submit a site to Yahoo where the customer is better served doing this on his own.

Understanding the waiting periods

A variety of waiting periods must be endured with each search engine before there is even a hope of being listed. Knowing and understanding these waiting periods before beginning the process can eliminate or at least minimize frustration and confusion. Typical waiting periods for some of the more popular engines are six months with Yahoo; one to two months with Lycos and 4-6 weeks with Excite or is that 4-6months? What they say and what happens in reality can be very different.

Ongoing promotion tasks:
To improve site rankings and increase understanding of the listing process, there are many tasks that can be done on a regular or semi-regular basis. Optimizing rankings within the search engines is also to help ensure that a site attracts the right traffic.
Some of the monthly and weekly promotion tasks are:

Crunching and examining log files

Data contained in log files is an excellent resource for identifying which engines are sending the majority of traffic to a site. It can also show which key words or gateway pages are generating the strongest traffic and what are those visitors doing when they enter the site.

Searching the Search Engines

Conduct a search of the search engines to analyze where the highest rankings of the site have materialized and what keywords are generating the best rankings. Different search engines use different rules to rank pages. Individual gateway pages should be created based on the knowledge and interpretation of what each search engine is using to determine top rankings. Several pages can be tested out on one or more engines and the pages that have the most success can be kept, while the unsuccessful pages can be dumped or revised to achieve a higher ranking.

Learning more about how the search engines work

Each search engine uses different rules to determine how well a Web page matches a particular query. As a result, building a single page that gets a good score in all the major engines is just about impossible. Learning how each engine ranks pages is also hard, since the engines often keep this information as a closely guarded secret. However, with a little patience, some experimentation and reverse engineering, the way that many of the search engines work can be discovered.

Resubmitting the site

For engines that reject a site or don't list it high enough, it is strongly recommended that more information is learned about the engine's criteria before resubmitting. This information should then be incorporated into gateway pages or key word revisions in order to have greater success with subsequent submissions. Fine tune the page (or pages) make adjustments to TITLE tags and META tags, then after resubmitting the site, track the results to further learn about the engine's criteria and which adjustments made an impact on the rankings. Don't be afraid to experiment, take some risks and gather data as you proceed.

Checking log files for traffic being directed to erroneous pages on the site

This is good news!! Don't dump these pages or remove them from the search engine as most people will do when they redesign their site. Any page with a high ranking is of value. If a page is bringing traffic to a site, leave that page on the search engine, don't change it but rather redirect the traffic to valid pages in the site.

Getting Noticed
For small to medium-sized Web sites, search engines are the most important source of traffic. Unfortunately, getting noticed in the search engines isn't an easy job. A Web site manager can spend months getting a site listed in an engine, only to find it ranks 50th in their search results. It's hard to give universal tips for improving search engine ranking because each engine has its own set of rules. In general, though, a page will rank well for a particular query if the search terms appear in the TITLE tag, the META tags, and in the body of the page.

Need help with your website - contact us at www.effiewebdesigns.com

Donna Brazile - takes obama's blanket

2009-01-21T06:49:00.000-08:00

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6691517

Opinion: Using MySpace and Facebook as business tools

2009-01-20T11:34:00.001-08:00

May 23, 2008 (Computerworld) The personal benefits of the social networks of MySpace.com and Facebook Inc. are well-known, but how well do they serve employees looking to enhance their careers or businesses who drool over the vast new pool of potential customers?

According to Michael Greene, research analyst at JupiterResearch, social networks such as Facebook and MySpace can be powerful marketing platforms. "MySpace has already become a must-use platform for entertainment marketers looking to connect with young and highly engaged audiences," he said. "And Facebook offers an array of options for marketers through its 'Pages' function and its applications platform." (For more information on Facebook, read "A newbie's guide to Facebook.")

Every Friday, employees are given an hour of Facebook time to connect and socialize with co-workers, customers, family and friends. Greene noted that the key for companies planning to use these sites to market their products and services is not only to use ads to "push" messages to consumers, but also to create engaging social environments that enable communication and self-expression.

And the benefits go beyond marketing, as rank-and-file workers use social networks to keep in touch with others. "Companies such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have thousands of employees who use these tools to share and connect with their networks, for both personal and business-related purposes," said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

Facebook Fridays
Some companies have embraced the social networking trend even more. Owyang said Serena Software Inc. in San Mateo, Calif., encourages its employees to share information online, connect with customers, and engage in dialogue and conversation. For example, the company recently announced a new corporate benefit called "Facebook Fridays" to its 800 employees across 18 countries. Every Friday, employees are given an hour of Facebook time to connect and socialize with co-workers, customers, family and friends. Owyang said, "For companies like Serena and others, the intranet has clearly moved outside of the firewall."

Lee Aase, manager of Syndication and Social Media at the Mayo Clinic and chancellor of Social Media University, Global noted that Facebook is the perfect "collaboration network" because it allows businesses to create unlimited numbers of free groups. These can be open (anyone can join), closed (by invitation only) or secret (where their existence doesn't show on any profile).

Workers can collaborate on projects, keep up with company news, or communicate with external vendors and agencies without companies having to provide the employees or the external parties with virtual private network access behind the corporate firewall. This is especially important to small and midsize businesses, which may not have the resources to provide VPNs to their employees and customers.

Not getting onboard
But some companies just don't get it. Aase compared these new opportunities for businesses to the adoption of early fax technology around 1990. Companies could suddenly receive customer purchase orders by fax instead of FedEx, a huge savings in time and dollars, and well worth the cost of the machine and the monthly charges for the additional phone lines.

If AT&T had offered all this for free, would anyone have declined? he asked. "Social networking sites like Facebook are a much more advanced communications phenomenon than the fax, but not only are many businesses failing to take advantage of these free communication services; some actively block employees from using social networks," Aase said.

He explained that in the sites' directory listings, a company can establish its own free "fan" page, complete with links to its Web site, photos, videos, and contact information to key employees or salespeople for all its customers to view. It's like a supercharged, multimedia Yellow Pages ad, but it's in a global telephone directory -- not just the local volume for one city -- and it's free.

Facebook and MySpace combined have a potential customer base of about 170 million consumers, and businesses can promote their products and services through these sites' free profile pages, bulletin boards, groups, events, forums, blogs and other features.

Recruitment advantage
And social networks can also be great recruitment tools. "With 85% of college students using Facebook," Aase said, "employee recruitment with job announcements targeted to students at select colleges with specific degrees can provide companies with a significant advantage over competitors searching for similar talent."

In a nutshell, social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook can expand the networking and marketing potential of any company. (And don't forget LinkedIn Corp., whose networking site has always been known for its business orientation. For a comparison between LinkedIn and Facebook, read "Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Which is better for business?")

And these sites aren't alone in the new world of social networking platforms that can benefit businesses. Owyang said a new breed of application providers has emerged, called "white-label social networks" that allow companies to create their own versions of Facebook, for example, that are custom-branded any way they want for their customers or employees. This opens a whole new marketing and advertising platform for businesses.

Launch of effiewebdesigns.com

2009-01-20T11:33:00.001-08:00