Google talks... tips to higher ranking in search

from the official Google blog -

23 questions to ask yourself for higher rankings in

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More guidance on building high-quality sites: "Webmaster level: All In recent months we’ve been especially focused on helping people find high-quality sites in Google’s search results. ..."

More guidance on building high-quality sites

Friday, May 06, 2011 at 11:22 AM

Webmaster level: All

In recent months we’ve been especially focused on helping people find high-quality sites in Google’s search results. The “Panda” algorithm change has improved rankings for a large number of high-quality websites, so most of you reading have nothing to be concerned about. However, for the sites that may have been affected by Panda we wanted to provide additional guidance on how Google searches for high-quality sites.

Our advice for publishers continues to be to focus on delivering the best possible user experience on your websites and not to focus too much on what they think are Google’s current ranking algorithms or signals. Some publishers have fixated on our prior Panda algorithm change, but Panda was just one of roughly 500 search improvements we expect to roll out to search this year. In fact, since we launched Panda, we've rolled out over a dozen additional tweaks to our ranking algorithms, and some sites have incorrectly assumed that changes in their rankings were related to Panda. Search is a complicated and evolving art and science, so rather than focusing on specific algorithmic tweaks, we encourage you to focus on delivering the best possible experience for users.

What counts as a high-quality site?

Our site quality algorithms are aimed at helping people find "high-quality" sites by reducing the rankings of low-quality content. The recent "Panda" change tackles the difficult task of algorithmically assessing website quality. Taking a step back, we wanted to explain some of the ideas and research that drive the development of our algorithms.

Below are some questions that one could use to assess the "quality" of a page or an article. These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves as we write algorithms that attempt to assess site quality. Think of it as our take at encoding what we think our users want.

Of course, we aren't disclosing the actual ranking signals used in our algorithms because we don't want folks to game our search results; but if you want to step into Google's mindset, the questions below provide some guidance on how we've been looking at the issue:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Writing an algorithm to assess page or site quality is a much harder task, but we hope the questions above give some insight into how we try to write algorithms that distinguish higher-quality sites from lower-quality sites.

What you can do

We've been hearing from many of you that you want more guidance on what you can do to improve your rankings on Google, particularly if you think you've been impacted by the Panda update. We encourage you to keep questions like the ones above in mind as you focus on developing high-quality content rather than trying to optimize for any particular Google algorithm.

One other specific piece of guidance we've offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.

We're continuing to work on additional algorithmic iterations to help webmasters operating high-quality sites get more traffic from search. As you continue to improve your sites, rather than focusing on one particular algorithmic tweak, we encourage you to ask yourself the same sorts of questions we ask when looking at the big picture. This way your site will be more likely to rank well for the long-term. In the meantime, if you have feedback, please tell us through our Webmaster Forum. We continue to monitor threads on the forum and pass site info on to the search quality team as we work on future iterations of our ranking algorithms.

Written by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

what you need to do for your website

I'm on the last mile of my website project...
this should have come a lot more earlier! LOL

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Before You SEO: Three Steps to Help Your Website Earn Its Keep

by Olga Taylor

Published on June 20, 2011   

In this article, you'll learn...

• Three ways to improve your site's performance before SEO
• How to identify your website's goals and take steps accordingly

As with so many other technologies in our tech-crazed world, search engine optimization (SEO) technologies are way ahead of our abilities to use them for a rational purpose.
As soon as we conceive of a new business, or hire a marketing whiz to take an old business "to the next level," we are consumed with keywords, search rankings, and social media, as if doing exactly what the rest of the world does has ever made anyone rich.
SEO consists of Web tools and content strategies designed to help your target audience find your site by using Internet search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
SEO has the power to dramatically increase Web traffic to your site. But for that very reason, a search-optimized site can actually hurt your business rather than help it grow profitably.
How can SEO hurt your business? Consider a site that is not user-friendly, is repulsive to visitors (or attractive to the wrong kind), isn't competitive, or is lacking a clear value proposition and the support required to respond to inquiries or follow up on leads. So, do you really want to drive traffic to such a site?

In short, SEO works best when it is the last, rather than the first, item on your website checklist.
Yes, there is no end to how much you can spend on market research and usability testing. And yes, many businesses, especially smaller B2B outfits, don't typically run the risk of seriously damaging a brand because of a cookie-cutter website.
Even so, three commonly overlooked steps can vastly improve your site's performance—before you SEO.
1. How can I help you?
Ask yourself what you want your website to do for your business. Just because you "have to have one," doesn't mean that your website cannot serve some useful purpose.
Likewise, just because you have a website, doesn't mean it can be all things to all people. Remember that your website is only productive to the extent you actively use it to reach out. Fresh content, sales and customer support, collecting and acting on feedback—all require effort and expense. Therefore, it is important to set clear and realistic goals for your website and review and revise them regularly.
Typically, a website is used to perform any of the following tasks:

• Sell
• Educate
• Engage

Contrary to popular logic, for many businesses these three tasks are vastly different and sometimes antagonistic toward each other:

• Selling involves clearly describing, packaging, and pricing products and services to make it easy for the qualified buyer to decide not if, but what he is going to buy.
• Educating is directed toward prospects at an earlier stage in the buying process. Educational content explains features, benefits, and concepts to those potentially new to the product. It can help earn prospects' trust and respect by providing them with useful information. It can also confuse and turn off a buyer who thought he knew what he wanted to buy; in this case, too much educational content can actually hurt sales.
• Engaging involves getting site visitors to act (e.g., comment on a blog post, fill out a survey, take a demo, or, sign up for the company's newsletter). Engaging can be another useful tool in early-stage prospecting. It can also be a drain on the company's resources, attracting those without purchasing or influencing authority.

It is helpful, especially for a small business, to choose one of those three activities as their site's primary goal. Then, the site's content and SEO can be tailored to a specific stage of the buying process—and upstream and downstream marketing and sales functions can be clearly defined and prioritized.
If two or more of these tasks are equally important, each can be assigned to a separate portion of the website (a microsite, for example) and treated separately for SEO purposes.

2. How's my driving?
Is your blog driving traffic to your site? Is your "About" page driving it away? Web analytics has the answers, but the volume of data can overwhelm you. However, if you know exactly what your site is supposed to do, choosing and tracking appropriate statistics is straightforward and highly effective.
For example, if your website's main job is to educate, tracking time spent on specific articles can help you understand the demand for various educational topics—and configure your SEO accordingly.

3. Watch who you're calling 'dense'
Keyword density is a simple and popular way to manipulate search rankings. Because of density concerns, many websites offer just that: keyword soups with little salt or pepper to make them palatable. Check the so-called case studies on most B2B sites. I challenge you to find one in ten that isn't a keyword-heavy list of product features.
A better tactic is to make sure that content serves its stated purpose first: clear and concise for the "sell" audience, informative for the "educate" audience, and exciting for the "engage" audience. Then go ahead and use SEO, referrer sites, or other traffic stimulants.
Keep in mind that what you are ultimately trying to "optimize" is the match between your site and prospective buyers searching the Web. In the long run, playing the numbers only drives up competition for each set of eyeballs.
On the other hand, with careful targeting and readable content, you can use SEO techniques to your business' full advantage.

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2011/5285/before-you-seo-three-steps-to-help-your-website-earn-its-keep#ixzz1Pu94Soy4

12 Social Media Tools recommended by the Pros

Now here they come...

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12 Social Media Tools recommended by the Pros
Recommended by the Pros

By Cindy King
Published June 20, 2011

Are you struggling to make social media work for your business? Sometimes a few well-chosen tools are all you need to get your social media marketing working for you.
In our recent Social Media Success Summit, there were presentations that covered all the key topics you need to make your social media marketing easy. In this article, I’ll share 12 of those tools that were recommended by the pros.

Tools to Refine Your Visibility and Engagement

Here are three tools recommended by Mari Smith during her first presentation on increasing your visibility and engagement on Facebook.

#1: Socialbakers

Get useful stats from Socialbakers. Socialbakers offers paid services to monitor your Facebook statistics, but it also provides useful free statistics for Facebook and LinkedIn.

Check out the useful marketing data on Socialbakers.

#2: Kurrently

Find out what’s being shared on social media with Kurrently, a free, easy-to-use, real-time search engine for results from Twitter and Facebook. “Companies can capitalize on just-in-time marketing and social CRM opportunities like never before.”

You can search through Facebook or Twitter or both.

#3: Blekko

Select the sites you want to search with Blekko. You can create “slashtags” for groups of URLs, friends, experts and communities and you can “slash in” what you want and “slash out” what you don’t want to search.

With Blekko, you have more control over your search results thanks to the slashtags you create.

Tools to Measure Specific Social Media Goals

Jay Baer gave a fantastic presentation on measuring social media. He clearly identified the different goals a company could have on social media and recommended tools to use to monitor results for each specific goal. Here are three of those tools.

#4: Social Mention

If social awareness is your main social media goal, then be sure to check out Social Mention, which allows you to set up social media alerts so you can measure awareness for specific keywords.

"Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user-generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information."

#5: Klout

Klout is another tool you can use to measure awareness on Twitter and Facebook.

Check out the different graphs for your score results on Klout.

#6: PostRank Analytics

If customer loyalty is your main social media goal, you can use PostRank Analytics to measure results in improving loyalty.

PostRank Analytics is a favorite tool of social media marketers.

Tools to Get the Job Done

Frank Eliason gave an overview of how to use social media in business and shared two of the tools he’s found useful.

#7: Blogsearch.Google

Use Blogsearch.Google.com for better search results than Google Alerts. There are many tools to monitor keywords. Don’t forget to use this one!

Remember to check out what blogs are writing about you through Blogsearch.Google.com.

#8: Twitterfall

Use Twitterfall when you need to show executives how you can monitor what’s being said about your brand on Twitter.

Twitterfall specializes in real-time tweet searches.

A Useful Tool for Twitter Marketing

Hollis Thomases showed businesses how to use Twitter marketing to grow using this tool:

#9: Friend or Follow

Friend or Follow helps you improve your Twitter marketing. It tells you who’s not following you back on Twitter and who you’re not following back.

Use Friend or Follow to craft a stronger Twitter presence with your audience.

Tools to Make Video Blogging Easy

Steve Garfield always makes video blogging easy for everyone. Here are three tools to create on-the-fly videos to enhance your social media content.

#10: Wetoku

Sign up for Wetoku to make the popular side-by-side video interviews. All you need to do is sign in and send an invite code by email to the person you want to interview.

Wetoku is an easy tool to use for interview videos.

#11: Socialcam

If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, be sure to check out Socialcam. Steve says this is the easiest way to share videos with your social networks.

Socialcam combines video sharing with social communities.

#12: Stupeflix

Use Stupeflix to integrate after-effects and photos to your videos. If you want to do editing without using editing software, this tool is for you.

Stupeflix is an easy way to make your videos more appealing.

Find the Tools You Need

One of my takeaways from the summit was that you don’t need to use all of the tools available. Businesses have different cultures, different goals and are at different stages in integrating social media into their marketing mix. These social media pros found the tools that worked best for them.
Do you think any of the tools above can make your social media marketing easier to execute? Please let us know in the comments below if you’re going to try any of them.

Gartner identifies the Top 10 apps for 2012

Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012

STAMFORD, Conn., November 18, 2009— Gartner, Inc. has identified the top 10 consumer mobile applications for 2012. Gartner listed applications based on their impact on consumers and industry players, considering revenue, loyalty, business model, consumer value and estimated market penetration.

“Consumer mobile applications and services are no longer the prerogative of mobile carriers,” said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. “The increasing consumer interest in smartphones, the participation of Internet players in the mobile space, and the emergence of application stores and cross-industry services are reducing the dominance of mobile carriers. Each player will influence how the application is delivered and experienced by consumers, who ultimately vote with their attention and spending power.”
“The ultimate competition between industry players is for control of the ‘ecosystem’ and user experience, and the owner of the ecosystem will benefit the most in terms of revenue and user loyalty,” Ms. Shen said. “We predict that most users will use no more than five mobile applications at a time and most future opportunities will come from niche market ‘killer applications’.”

The top 10 consumer mobile applications in 2012 will include:

No. 1: Money TransferThis service allows people to send money to others using Short Message Service (SMS). Its lower costs, faster speed and convenience compared with traditional transfer services have strong appeal to users in developing markets, and most services signed up several million users within their first year. However, challenges do exist in both regulatory and operational risks. Because of the fast growth of mobile money transfer, regulators in many markets are piling in to investigate the impact on consumer costs, security, fraud and money laundering. On the operational side, market conditions vary, as do the local resources of service providers, so providers need different market strategies when entering a new territory.
No. 2: Location-Based ServicesLocation-based services (LBS) form part of context-aware services, a service that Gartner expects will be one of the most disruptive in the next few years. Gartner predicts that the LBS user base will grow globally from 96 million in 2009 to more than 526 million in 2012. LBS is ranked No. 2 in Gartner’s top 10 because of its perceived high user value and its influence on user loyalty. Its high user value is the result of its ability to meet a range of needs, ranging from productivity and goal fulfillment to social networking and entertainment.
No. 3: Mobile SearchThe ultimate purpose of mobile search is to drive sales and marketing opportunities on the mobile phone. To achieve this, the industry first needs to improve the user experience of mobile search so that people will come back again. Mobile search is ranked No. 3 because of its high impact on technology innovation and industry revenue. Consumers will stay loyal to some search services, but instead of sticking to one or two search providers on the Internet, Gartner expects loyalty on the mobile phone to be shared between a few search providers that have unique technologies for mobile search.
No. 4: Mobile BrowsingMobile browsing is a widely available technology present on more than 60 percent of handsets shipped in 2009, a percentage Gartner expects to rise to approximately 80 percent in 2013. Gartner has ranked mobile browsing No. 4 because of its broad appeal to all businesses. Mobile Web systems have the potential to offer a good return on investment. They involve much lower development costs than native code, reuse many existing skills and tools, and can be agile — both delivered and updated quickly. Therefore, the mobile Web will be a key part of most corporate business-to-consumer (B2C) mobile strategies.
No. 5: Mobile Health MonitoringMobile health monitoring is the use of IT and mobile telecommunications to monitor patients remotely, and could help governments, care delivery organizations (CDOs) and healthcare payers reduce costs related to chronic diseases and improve the quality of life of their patients. In developing markets, the mobility aspect is key as mobile network coverage is superior to fixed network in the majority of developing countries. Currently, mobile health monitoring is at an early stage of market maturity and implementation, and project rollouts have so far been limited to pilot projects. In the future, the industry will be able to monetize the service by offering mobile healthcare monitoring products, services and solutions to CDOs.
No. 6: Mobile PaymentMobile payment usually serves three purposes. First, it is a way of making payment when few alternatives are available. Second, it is an extension of online payment for easy access and convenience. Third, it is an additional factor of authentication for enhanced security. Mobile payment made Gartner’s top 10 list because of the number of parties it affects — including mobile carriers, banks, merchants, device vendors, regulators and consumers — and the rising interest from both developing and developed markets. Because of the many choices of technologies and business models, as well as regulatory requirements and local conditions, mobile payment will be a highly fragmented market. There will not be standard practices of deployment, so parties will need to find a working solution on a case-by-case basis.

No. 7: Near Field Communication ServicesNear field communication (NFC) allows contactless data transfer between compatible devices by placing them close to each other, within ten centimeters. The technology can be used, for example, for retail purchases, transportation, personal identification and loyalty cards. NFC is ranked No. 7 in Gartner’s top ten because it can increase user loyalty for all service providers, and it will have a big impact on carriers' business models. However, its biggest challenge is reaching business agreement between mobile carriers and service providers, such as banks and transportation companies. Gartner expects to see large-scale deployments starting from late 2010, when NFC phones are likely to ship in volume, with Asia leading deployments followed by Europe and North America.

No. 8: Mobile AdvertisingMobile advertising in all regions is continuing to grow through the economic downturn, driven by interest from advertisers in this new opportunity and by the increased use of smartphones and the wireless Internet. Total spending on mobile advertising in 2008 was $530.2 million, which Gartner expects to will grow to $7.5 billion in 2012. Mobile advertising makes the top 10 list because it will be an important way to monetize content on the mobile Internet, offering free applications and services to end users. The mobile channel will be used as part of larger advertising campaigns in various media, including TV, radio, print and outdoors.
No. 9: Mobile Instant MessagingPrice and usability problems have historically held back adoption of mobile instant messaging (IM), while commercial barriers and uncertain business models have precluded widespread carrier deployment and promotion. Mobile IM is on Gartner’s top 10 list because of latent user demand and market conditions that are conducive to its future adoption. It has a particular appeal to users in developing markets that may rely on mobile phones as their only connectivity device. Mobile IM presents an opportunity for mobile advertising and social networking, which have been built into some of the more advanced mobile IM clients.
No. 10: Mobile MusicMobile music so far has been disappointing — except for ring tones and ring-back tones, which have turned into a multibillion-dollar service. On the other hand, it is unfair to dismiss the value of mobile music, as consumers want music on their phones and to carry it around. We see efforts by various players in coming up with innovative models, such as device or service bundles, to address pricing and usability issues. iTunes makes people pay for music, which shows that a superior user experience does make a difference.
Additional information is available in the Gartner report “Dataquest Insight: The Top Ten Consumer Mobile Applications for 2012." The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1205513.

Business model for mobile apps by Mobyaffilicates

 Blog » Resources » Affiliate marketing – the new business model for mobile app developers?

Affiliate marketing – the new business model for mobile app developers?

The dominant business models for app developers at present are user payments or display advertising, however, affiliate marketing could be a new and potentially much more lucrative way of monetising many apps.
User-payment driven models can be very lucrative for hit applications, especially games.  Howevever, there is increasing that application prices are suffering from downward pressure towards free.  New types of payment models such as subscriptions or in-app payments are promising although not all application types are suited to these approaches.
Display advertising can pay the bills on free apps if there is sufficient scale of usage.  Using ad networks like admob or potentially integrating mutliple ad networks using a mobile ad optimizer such as smaato or mobclix can deliver significant revenues for some apps.  However, the growth in mobile inventory, and falling click-through rates mean that it is becoming harder to make this model work.

Affiliate marketing is an alternative revenue stream to user payments and display advertising that is just opening up on mobile and is creating a big opportunity for mobile app developers.  Affiliate marketing is already a major category in the online advertising world and its now moving onto mobile.  Unlike current mobile advertising which is typically sold on a CPM (cost per thousand) or more usually a CPC (cost per click) basis, mobile affiliate programs payout based on a CPA (cost per action) basis in a single payment or a revenue share.  In some cases the payments for particular actions (e.g. in the mobile casino space) can be very high – up to $50 in some cases.  As a result, with the right approach affiliate marketing can be more lucrative for mobile application developers than traditional mobile advertising or mobile payments from users.
A number of players are now offering affiliate programs for iphone apps including William Hill, Offerpal and  Allslots/ Brightshare.  In addition, the iphone appstore affiliate program run by linkshare has also been extended to work on mobile.  Android-compatible affiliate programs are also emerging, taking advantage of the more open nature of the android appstore ecosystem .  Developers on other platforms such as Java, Symbian, Blackberry and mobile web can typically choose from an even greater range of different mobile affiliate programs and networks.

There are also opportunities for application developers to use APIs from online shopping services to build affiliate-revenue driven apps.  For example, apps could be developed for specific dietary requirements around online grocery APIs or to aggregate affiliate feeds from a range of retailers into a single app.

Another approach is to link mobile applications to the massive growth in vouchercodes.  For example, the UK-based vouchercloud iphone app is a mobile-focused way of grabbing a slide of the discount voucher market.  Whereas there is little room for new players on the web, vouchercloud has been able to build significant traction by being the first to market with a high quality voucher-driven iphone app.
Finally, the ability for mobile applications to interact with real world retail stores presents another affiliate marketing opportunity.  Services like the shopsavvy iphone app allow users to scan a product barcode in a store and get pricing information from online suppliers.  The affiliate potential of such applications is potentially enormous.
So – application developers need to look seriously at the opportunities presented by affiliate marketing, and consider this business model right from the intial concept stage in the design process.

Apple shows how to make music from shared (pirated?) music

Now that's how the digital world reconciles with the music labels...?

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