Smitty’s Web Marketing Blog

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo agreed on a standard for sitemaps using the XML standard.

Sitemaps.org is the official web site that describes the protocol.

The accepted standard is a sitemap created in XML.

Sample Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84 http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84/sitemap.xsd">

<url><loc>http://www.smittysholdings.com/index.php</loc>
<lastmod>2008-03-21T10:04:09-04:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

The optional elements include:

• the date the page was last modified
• the frequency at which the page is likely to change
• the priority of the page relative to other pages on the site. The priority is a numeric value between 0 and 1, and the default is set to 0.5. The idea is to set a higher priority value for pages that you consider more important and want to ensure that the crawlers give them priority

To learn more about XML sitemaps, visit sitemap.org

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  — Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

Former Google team members set up new search engine Cuil (pronounced "Cool"), launched Monday
First time Google faced a general-purpose search engine created by former workers
Backed by $33 million venture capital, claims it indexes more pages than Google
Through May, Google held a 62 percent share of U.S. search market

The Complete Story

http://www.cuil.com

Cuil Launches Biggest Search Engine on the Web

Technology Company Offers New Look at Search

MENLO PARK, Calif.—July 28, 2008—Cuil, a technology company pioneering a new approach to search, unveils its innovative search offering, which combines the biggest Web index with content-based relevance methods, results organized by ideas, and complete user privacy. Cuil (www.Cuil.com) has indexed 120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine.

The Press Release

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PPC is short for Pay Per Click. Google, Yahoo and MSN, as well as other search engines, offer pay per click advertising services.

PPC is an advertising process where you bid on keyword phrases.

Pay Per Click is useful when you have a new websites or if you want to bid on keyword phrases that you cannot get naturally ranked in the top 10 results.

Since Google has the largest market share of search engine queries, then it is the first search engine one would use to start a PPC campaign.

To setup a PPC campaign, you need to do several things.

1. Select keywords phrases that would best fit your marketing needs
2. Group the keyword phrases to create ad groups
3. Write the ad for the keyword group
4. Make sure you have an solid landing page for each ad group
5. Setup the account with business contact information and a credit card
6. Load up the ads and set the bids
7. Monitor the account weekly
8. Be sure to create reports on a monthly basis to make campaign adjustments

This is an example of an ad:

Website Marketing
Market like the Experts
Increase traffic & Gain More Sales
www.SmittysHoldings.com

There are many lessons to learn in Pay Per Click marketing. The biggest factors to understand are biding, landing pages, conversions and use of the reporting.

It's always best to use someone with experience to manage a pay per click account or you can burn through money like it's water.

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Your phone number is one of the most important elements on your web site. Do you make it easy or hard to locate that valuable asset?

Where is your phone number located on your website?

Is it located on the contact page?

Is it in the footer?

Is it located on the left or right columns?

How about in your header or the top of the web page?

You must make it easy for web visitors to locate your easiest contact point. You will lose valuable leads if the phone number is buried or located where visitors do not see it readily.

Look at your website and find out where it is locate. Make those small changes - it will result in more people contacting you.

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From Axandra Search Engine Facts newsletter:

More factors that may yet influence your rankings at least with Search Engines:

—————————————————————– 

Can your website usability influence your search engine rankings? 
Do search engines care about the usability of your web pages? Does it make a difference whether your web pages are easy to navigate or not?

A recent patent application from Yahoo indicates that search engines might take a look at your web page design. The document includes a long list of factors that search engines can consider to determine the usability of a web page.

Why can usability be important to search engines?

The patent application contains a short paragraph that explains why search engines might consider the usability of web pages:

"It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize. [...].

If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called 'clutter.'"

Web pages with good usability usually have a higher conversion rate than cluttered web pages. Web pages with good usability often have a higher quality than other web pages and search engines try to return high quality web pages in their search results.

Which factors can search engines analyze to determine the clutter of your pages?

Yahoo's patent applications provides a list of 51 web page elements that can be analyzed to determine the clutter of a web page:

Total number of links
Total number of words
Total number of images (non-ad images)
Image area above the fold (non-ad images)
Dimensions of page
Page area (total)
Page length
Total number of tables
Maximum table columns (per table)
Maximum table rows (per table)
Total rows
Total columns
Total cells
Average cell padding (per table)
Average cell spacing (per table)
Dimensions of fold
Fold area
Location of center of fold relative to center of page
Total number of font sizes used for links
Total number of font sizes used for headings
Total number of font sizes used for body text
Total number of font sizes
Presence of “tiny” text
Total number of colors (excluding ads)
Alignment of page elements
Average page luminosity
Fixed vs. relative page width
Page weight (proxy for load time)
Total number of ads
Total ad area
Area of individual ads
Area of largest ad above the fold
Largest ad area
Total area of ads above the fold
Page space allocated to ads
Total number of external ads above the fold
Total number of external ads below the fold
Total number of external ads
Total number of internal ads above the fold
Total number of internal ads below the fold
Total number of internal ads
Number of sponsored link ads above the fold
Number of sponsored link ads below the fold
Total number of sponsored link ads
Number of image ads above the fold
Number of image ads below the fold
Total number of image ads
Number of text ads above the fold
Number of text ads below the fold
Total number of text ads
Position of ads on page
According to the patent application, Yahoo might also consider the presence of animated and flashing ads and the average ad luminosity.

What does this mean to your web pages?

Good website usability can greatly improve the conversion rate of your website. If your website gets many visitors but only a few sales then it might be that your web pages are too cluttered and that you have to improve your website design.

Google has a similar patent application with the name "Detecting and rejecting annoying documents" so it seems that good website design becomes more and more important if you want to get high search engine rankings.

The HTML code of your web pages must make a good impression to search engines. If search engines find that your web pages don't have the right content then these pages cannot get high search engine rankings.

Analyze your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to find out how search engines see the contents of your web pages and what you can do to improve your pages so that they get top 10 rankings on Google and Yahoo.
 
Visit http://www.Axandra.com
 

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I recently found that someone had managed to spam my Blog recently for Free Ringtones. They added a bunch of links and an image about ringtones.

I had since removed the offending links but found they posted links to all sorts of FFA link farms to my wordpress blog - hundreds of links. This will no doubt be a source of concern of me, because I feel they can have a negative impact to my rankings and I totally disapprove of this type of marketing or linking. This makes me feel this person violated my website by exploiting a security weakness of my blog. Unfortunately, there is nothing to do at this point until the links disappear over time.

I tried to look at the scope of the incoming links this jerk performed and they were quite busy. Hundreds of posts were made to the  blog where the web page was residing. There wasn't just one spam post, but several and this person took advantage of it.

The whole issue is that I am ultimately responsible for everything on my website - especially, the blog and I now have to watch my website more closely. It is a lesson for everyone that allows people to post messages, replies or comments to anything you have on your website. Hence, I am turning off the ability to make comments to my blog.

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Yahoo! now gives you more control of your account, by letting you specify websites in our partner distribution network on which you don't want your ads to appear.

What you need to know…

•	Block your ads from up to 250 web sites *
•	Works with Sponsored  Search and Content Match
•	Block sites on your entire account
•	Complements pricing discounts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you know, with Sponsored Search, your ads can appear in search results on Yahoo! and throughout our partner distribution network. Similarly, if you opt in to Content Match, your ads can appear both on Yahoo! and our partners' sites. With our blocked domains feature, available today in your account, you can now specify websites in our partner distribution network where you don't want your ads to appear.

Blocked domains is just one part of Yahoo!'s work to improve the value of the traffic that we deliver to you. For example, you already may be receiving pricing discounts based on our assessment of the quality of traffic coming from our partner distribution network, and our Click Protection System automatically filters out invalid clicks.

Using blocked domains is easy:

1. Log into your account.
2. Click on the "Administration" tab.
3. In the Account General Information box, next to the "Blocked Domains" heading, click on "Submit Domains".

Learn more about blocked domains.

 * You cannot block any Yahoo! domains.

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I have been playing around with this idea and thought it's time to see what other people would think.

The biggest issue that everyone has is the fear that the RIAA will come to your home and take you to court to pay restitution for the music you downloaded illegally from the internet. I know many people feel strongly on both sides about the music copyright issues. Before I say another word, I feel that all artists should be rewarded for their work. It's the right thing to do.

However, my idea/plan is to take the music industry another way - providing the free music to those who can't and/or don't want to pay for it. It's called advertising or paid sponsorship with a twist.

Just like they do to when we watch Heros, Stargate, or Desparate Housewives - but there is a small twist to my idea. OK, here is the thought - let's say I want a song from Five for Fighting called 100 years. Let's say that a national company wants to sponsor the song for advertising purposes. So we are going to rename that song from 100 years to 100 years sponsored by XYZ company. Now we recode the MP3 so it will not play if the name is changed - maintaining the sponsor's ad. The sponsor can pay whatever is agreed to make that song an internet free song. Granted there is the rub, that the artist may not feel they may make as much as if the CD was purchased in the store, but the sponsorship will help cover the "free" aspect of using the internet for free music.

By keeping the naming convention in place  - the sponsors get their names in front of the public, the music is shared freely and the musicians get their royalties. People can always go to the stores to purchase the CD's or use companies like itunes to download the music. 

The bottom line the internet is seen as a free way to share knowledge and thus, text, music, video, and  images. If this can help pay back those that created the materials, then I say it's time for a change.

 I welcome comments.

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