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Archive for August, 2010

Be the Best Twitterer – Some tips for Using Twitter

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 31, 2010

Twitter is a micro-blogging service and it is very hot now.

By following tips, you can be the best twitterer.

  1. Set up a good profile: offer people a preview what your tweets going to disclose.
  2. Add a profile picture: to make your tweets more personal, add a profile photo of yourself.
  3. Use a simple and short Twitter name: If you use a longer Twitter ID then it will take more space, and a complex name can make it hard for people to reply or mention you.
  4. Add a link to your profile that notifies more about you: Add your blog, or an about me page, or any other page that recommends more information about the person behind the tweets.
  5. Post photos: Post photos on Twitter and insert some interest to your stream.
  6. Make use of correct grammar: make your tweets understandable and clear but occasional you can use abbreviations as passable.
  7. Specify your location: Many people will follow you if they know where you are, because lots of people use Twitter for local networking.
  8. Find out the lingo: try to know about what DM, @, RT, and other Twitter symbols stand for, look them up.
  9. Don’t be in hurry to build your network: allow your following to grow organically. Don’t follow hundreds of people right away.
  10. Use @ to Reply someone: Place a @ sign in front of someone’s name on Twitter to write to them specifically, or simply just mention them-they will be notified that you did so.
  11. Use smaller/short URLs: Use a URL shortener like TinyURL, bit.ly or is.gd etc.
  12. Use your mobile device: Tweet from your phone, iPod, or other mobile device to keep your Twitter updated on the go, using the mobile web or text.
  13. Find your friends: In order to find your friends, classmates, organizations, and others that you may want to follow on Twitter, you can use Twitter’s search option.
  14. Leave your profile and tweet public: maintain your tweet public so that people can get to know you before deciding to blindly follow.
  15. Use a hashtag (#): Make it easy for others to find your tweets Use a hashtag (#) to be a part of the most popular conversation.
  16. Use abbreviations: to save space and reading effort, use of codes like LOL, BRB, and NSFW.
  17. Use appropriate words: Use only the words that are completely necessary to get your message across.
  18. You can make your account private if you don’t want to share your updates with the world.

Tips for Finding Friends on Twitter

You need to build your own community and find people to follow.

  1. Find people with similar interests: Check out Twitter directories to find people in your niche and interests, as well as those in your location.
  2. Don’t be anxious in finding followers: focus on building good relationships with those you follows. Twitter isn’t about quantity, but quality.
  3. Follow genuine/real people: The people who want to game the system-build relationships with people, just avoid them.
  4. Keep an eye on Facebook statuses: Many Facebook users tie their status to Twitter-if you see any @ signs in there, chances are they are on Twitter.
  5. Share your passions in life: Discuss your hobbies and interests, and hash tag them so others can find you-and find others this way as well.
  6. Register yourself in directories: Make sure you’re easy to find by putting your Twitter name in relevant directories.
  7. Get out from behind the screen: Participate in meet ups to meet your followers face to face, and get connected with others.
  8. Be informative: Share links, video, and more in order to be interesting and valuable to the Twitter discussion.
  9. Follow influencers: Follow significant people on Twitter and interact with them to get lots of value.
  10. Follow the people that you think are interesting: Listen to people that say things you’re interested in hearing.
  11. Be funny and interesting: Make your timeline entertaining so that others will want to follow you.
  12. Make yourself an authority: Share invaluable knowledge that would be missed if you stopped tweeting.

Tips for Keeping Followers

Once you’ve got followers, be sure to keep them by following these strategies.

  1. Don’t spam: unnecessary DMs, repeated messages, and constant annoying information will get you unfollowed quickly.
  2. Follow back: If someone is following you, and they offer some value, go ahead and follow them back-you can always take it back later. For goodness sakes, just reciprocate.
  3. Don’t make Twitter an extension of your blog: Twitter isn’t RSS. Twitter about your blog, but go beyond it as well.
  4. Take it easy: Don’t tweet incessantly-or you’ll flood the windows of others so much that they’ll want to stop listening.

Tips for Tweeting

These are some of the ideas and things you can tweet about.

  1. Share your announcements: Let people know about your achievements-shows, interviews, big trips.
  2. Tweet useful links: if you found something interesting, useful, or funny then share it with your Twitter network.
  3. Have fun: Just be social, make connections, and use Twitter for good.
  4. Share multimedia: Twitter loves who share photos, videos, and more, so share good multimedia.
  5. Update daily: Update at least once a day so your followers have something to follow along with.

Tips for Developing Relationships

Try to develop a good relationships with your Twitter followers.

  1. Ask questions, give answers: invite others for giving their opinions to improve relationships. Reply on other’s queries, if you know the answers.
  2. Check your @ replies regularly: Make sure you know who is mentioning you by looking at your @ replies, and responding to them.
  3. Act as a team with others: Share information and work closely with others in your niche on Twitter.
  4. Show appreciation: If someone’s helped you out, be sure to thank them publicly.
  5. Be a human being: Share personal information too and show people that you’re a human being.
  6. Offer value: give people a reason to listen when you tweet by sharing your knowledge.
  7. Give shout outs: Mention your Twitter friends and give them the spotlight.
  8. Meet off of Twitter: Go to Tweetups and meet other users, or organize your own.
  9. Retweet: retweet,if someone shared a valuable information, and you can simultaneously share it with more people and show the person you retweeted that you appreciate them.
  10. Answer to every reply: If someone writes directly to you, be sure to acknowledge them by responding to their tweet.
  11. Be authentic: Avoid being false-stay honest and let people see yourself.
  12. Keep an eye on your reply ratio: track the ratio of normal tweets to reply tweets in balance in order to stay original while still actively engaging others.
  13. Take extended or private conversations to DM: If there’s a privacy issue involved, don’t Tweet in public-share via DM.

Tips for Getting Value

How you can get the best value out of Twitter? Here are the tips-

  1. Join the chat: Read what others are doing and reply to what you’re interested in.
  2. Ask for help: you can use Twitter to get your questions answered and find a lending hand.
  3. Try to keep your tweets short enough to retweet: If you want to be retweeted, make sure to leave extra space for at least “RT @yourname” to be adjoined.
  4. Keep up with the Twitter blog: Find out about technical problems, community issues, and more from the Twitter blog.
  5. Keep on active: Don’t use Twitter passively-be an active user to get the most value from it.
  6. Follow the news: Twitter is a great resource for breaking news-often beating typical media to the punch by hours.
  7. Try to tweet during peak times: People are most likely to see your tweets during US business hours, so time your usage accordingly.
  8. Stay on top of your friends: Use Twitter as a service to stay well connected with your real-life friends.
  9. Track mentions of keywords: Set up a service to inform you whenever certain keywords are used on Twitter.

But some actions that are best avoided on Twitter. They are -

  1. Remember to tweet like your grandma’s listening: Twitter is public, and even if you keep things private, you can never be too careful.
  2. Give information about links: Don’t just share links without any explanation-tell your followers why they need to visit.
  3. Keep it all to one tweet: You’re limited to 140 characters-keep it that way unless it’s absolutely necessary.
  4. Don’t share EVERYTHING you do: Don’t share useless details about your cat or grilled cheese sandwich for lunch-make things a little more interesting.
  5. Stop arguing: Debate is fine, but too much tense back and forth will turn followers off.
  6. Avoid automatic DMs: Don’t set up your account to send welcome DMs to new followers-it’s considered impersonal and bad form.
  7. Make sure your background doesn’t look like an advertisement: Many users choose to customize their background-just be careful not to take it too far.
  8. Keep your follow to following ratio fairly even: You should be following about the same amount of people who follow you-too far either way makes you look like a spammer or a snob.
  9. Don’t expect unrelated people to follow you back: If your Twitter is all about how you sell real estate in California, someone in Texas with no unifying interests to you is just not likely to want to reciprocate.
  10. Don’t be an island: Engage your followers, and show that you’re a part of the community.
  11. Don’t make it a following contest: If your main goal on Twitter is to amass as many Twitter followers as possible, you’ll end up turning a lot of followers off.
  12. Do not auto respond: Autoresponders take the personality out of Twitter-individually connect instead.
  13. Don’t always push your agenda: Twitter is a great marketing tool, but it will backfire on you if you abuse it.

If you’re a business on Twitter, then follow these tips -

  1. Don’t automate: Impersonality is the bane of Twitter-you’ll get more attention by engaging others and being genuine.
  2. Use a photo instead of a logo: Make your Twitter account more personal with a photo.
  3. Share your events: Make things interesting and possibly meet your followers through events.
  4. Be personal: Show character and enforce a friendly brand for your company.
  5. Share contests: Get followers more interested in what you tweet by holding contests.
  6. Create multiple accounts if necessary: Set up an official account and others for individual employees if you’d like.
  7. Follow relevant people: Connect with colleagues, journalists, competitors, and people who love your brand.
  8. Share your business culture with OHs (overheards): Let people listen in to what’s happening in your office by repeating fun moments and comments.
  9. Gather information: Ask Twitter followers what they’d like to see from you, and how you can improve.
  10. Monitor your brand: Use alerts to find out what people are saying about your business, and respond to them.
  11. Share your media: Link to videos, interviews, and more so followers can learn more about you and your business.
  12. Talk back: connect with those who engage you-and don’t be afraid to start conversations.

Tips that will help you to keep Productivity & Organization

  1. Use a client: Whether you’re on a mobile device or you’re on desktop, get some help from clients like TwitterFon, Twirl, or TweetDeck.
  2. Don’t feel like you have to read every tweet: You will miss some tweets, and that’s OK.
  3. Limit your Twitter time: Check in occasionally, but don’t let Twitter keep you from more important things.
  4. Don’t feel pressured to follow everyone back: While you generally should follow those who follow you, if someone offers no value to you, don’t feel guilty about not following them back.

What you can do Beyond Twitter? Some tips-

  1. Link your Twitter and Facebook: Use the Twitter app on Facebook to automatically update your status whenever you update Twitter.
  2. Put your blog posts on Twitter: Share blog post links on Twitter to reach a greater audience.
  3. Share your Twitter ID: Put your Twitter ID on your email, business cards, and other social media networks so others will know you’re on the service.
  4. Tell others about Twitter: Get people in your real life on Twitter, and you’ll have a great new way to communicate with them.
  5. Include a link to tweet blog posts: On your blog, place a link that allows readers to send out a tweet about your post.

Source : http://jimgrygar.byethost12.com/100-tips-essential-to-being-a-smarter-better-twitterer/

Posted in Twitter | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

Google TV -The Marriage between Web and TV

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 30, 2010

After a quite apprehensive start, the marriage between Web and TV seems to finally be realized with the announcement of Google TV, scheduled for early 2011. It must be said that TV is a big market: This is the most influential medium, one where the marketing dollars are highest. Google already has a foothold in television with the TV Ads (Place ads on television with Google TV Ads), now he aims to put his second foot and leave no room for others with a wide-ranging offering: Google TV Is Ready to Change the Game.

Google Chrome + Android = TV + Search + Marketplace

In abstract, the main features of Google TV:

●      Based on the operating system Android ( already used by many smartphones ) which permits the browser to run Chrome as well as many widgets available on theAndroid Market ;

●      recommends search system that combines both TV programs , offering VoD content YouTube and which is indexed on your media center ( if you have one );

●      Will directly integrated into a range of Smart TV from Sony or through the Review Box from Logitech (around $ 500).

The big players have already tried to marry web and TV without success ( with Microsoft MediaRoomYahoo! with Connected TV, Apple Apple TV…) , but Google is offering more determined and enjoys several levers differentiation :

●      The offer will be available to all manufacturers who wish to equip their products offer Google TV ( thanks to a smart all- in -one produced by Intel );

●      Many synergies are expected with smartphones (used as a remote intelligent or as payment terminal );

●      A partnership with suppliers grilles universal programs ( as Dish Network) gives meaning to the video stream and will provide additional content and services ( sheets IMDB about the movie you are watching … ) ;

●      Google is embarking on an adventure with two major industrial partners such as Logitech and Sony (which produces TV content but also have high value- added film catalogs with MGM, Columbia and Tri -Star) ;

●      Google relies on its broad ecosystem of Android developers to rapidly expand the supply .

Google’s objectives for this offering are placed very high. In fact it seems that Google is trying to trick a preliminary decapitation , well known military to crush the direct competitors of small (Roku, Vizio, Vudu…) And significantly raise the competitive pressure facing the duo Apple / Microsoft. To learn more, I recommend the very comprehensive report by Forrester : Google TV Is A Bigger Deal Than You Think.

Google TV could revolutionize the market (like the iPhone in its time)

Television is a bunch medium perfectly ripe with a well -performing value chain, as the telecom industry was before the landing of the iPhone! With Google TV, the Silicon Valley giant’s ambition to transform the industry by applying the recipe (with the model more than free) and injecting the lessons learned with the iPhone.

The targets of Google are the following:

●      Disintermediation of the cable operator and other satellite packages offering a universal search interface that would allow viewers to à la carte menu rather than ;

●      Amassing large amounts of data on usage and program schedules (as it does with Google Analytics and Google Maps ) ;

●      Generate income with ad placement in its search interface.

A second wind for TVs connected

Connect your TV to the Internet is not new, but when Google is sticking there, as anticipated, is that they can disrupt our habits and in -depth definitely change the way we consume content via the small screen (actually rather large in some ) .

One hand there is a very good timing because Google is launching right into a phase of renewal where the TV is in the process of reinventing itself ( HD , 3D , TNT … ) and where consumers demand more flexibility and potential for equipment that costs the skin of knees … (The Future Of TV Is … TV) . We are also entering a period where content piracy practices are commonplace and where public authorities are not sure how to do (see the distressing awareness campaign HADOPI). Far be it from me to revive the debate on this subject, but there is one thing I know : You can not fight against the market and in the absence of a viable offer , viewers will offset weakness what they find on their TV (Google TV – If The Vikings Do not Deliver , The Pirates Will) .

Google TV is also an opportunity to popularize the use of digital video recorder and media center that stores photos, videos and movies from the family.

The challenges facing Google

Now they have industrial partners for the technical part, Google remains the difficult task of shielding the “content “. This implies in particular entering partnerships with content providers who are also distributors for the most (Either with their TV channels or offer Catch-up TV).

Unless … unless the examples of the music industry ( and locked by Apple iTunes) and the press ( destabilized by Google News) do not fear the giants of TV that could fall back on themselves and we do the coup d’ Asterix …

Last challenge for Google is Usability. For we must understand that Google TV is neither more nor less than a computer on which it is possible to surf the Internet , search content , installing applications … But how with a simple remote : By offering a simplified interface ? By marketing an improved remote control (like the Litl TV)?

The utopia of personalized TV

Early observers of the Google TV offers are already starting to fantasize about a principle of chain completely customized to the tastes of viewers who will be so dazzled by the fineness of behavioral targeting that prefer watch the ads which correspond perfectly rather than programs. Oops … I did not linger on these forecasts crazy.

We now know that personalization toward a utopia that has lost a lot of money and time to industrial web. The tendency is rather to focus on systems of recommendations or suggestions (Americans call it the curated lists). These recommendations could be made by a portal (ie Google TV), a medium (the list of programs recommended by the TV columnist for seven days ) or community ( with services like ROOF or Joost) .

Who could compete with Google?

Now that the wolf has pointed the tip of his nose into the fold, the question remains which could potentially compete with Google:

●      Sony – Because they have a great mastery of the consumer electronics ( it is a strong brand) , because they have a good base with the PS3 ( which also functions as a media center and a distribution channel ), because they have lots of content (movies and music ) . Sony could very well compete with Google’s plans, but nothing will happen since they just signed a partnership is very strong (they prefer to marry and share the profits rather than compete) .

●      MicrosoftBecause they have mastered the game software, because they are already present in many homes with the Xbox , because they have the means and ambition . Yes but Microsoft is currently engaged on many fronts (cloud computing , search , mobile …) to mobilize a large portion of its resources .

●      Apple – Which enjoy a great reputation among the general public ( and the favor of financial markets ) , the ecosystem of iTunes terribly effective , an offer that asks only to be dusted . Add to that the large ambitions Cloud entertainement (including the acquisition of Lala) .

In short , you can visualize about a hypothetical Apple TV that embellish your living room (and definitely would render your bank account) but it will not happen because it would imply a greater diversification in activities that Apple could worry financial markets ( Steve Jobs has just explain that Apple is a “mobile – device company“) .

Finally we can say that Google has virtually won the battle of the show. This signature piece of the home where members congregate, where you can relax / entertained, where there is so much money at stake for Google plans to capture a large part indirectly, just as it does with the web. Google recently said they generated nearly $ 54 billion of economic activity not only U.S. , imagine what it could be given with a mass medium like TV advertising revenues which totaled $ 70 billion Widely United States alone … enough to fill more boxes of Google and allow it to further increase its presence in our daily lives. I look forward to the Google Car!

Read More on http://www.fredcavazza.net/

Posted in SEO | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Google Analytics to Tracking Google Places

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 26, 2010

Do you use your Google Analytics to track visits and goals from Google Places, Google Maps, and from Universal Search? When you do quarterly or annual campaign ROI scrutiny, then tracking this click data can help you in understanding which referrals and campaigns produced the best results for you.

How to Track Google Places Data in Google Analytics

You can snap over to your Google Places account and get some eye-catching amazing insights, but this doesn’t help you create reporting and dashboards for your management team or for quick access to holistic campaign tracking. There’s no maps.google.com acknowledgment from those clicks.

Hence to understand which keywords, and from which placement in Google Maps and Google Places, produced a visit from our listing or from our Google Places page, you can use Google Analytics. The technique is fairly simple and is viewed in part at Blumenthals.com. These steps are:

  • Generate a custom tracking URL using the Google Analytics URL Builder
  • Redirect a short location-specific URL to any page you like with the custom URL appending it
  • Create two profiles in your Google Analytics account: Maps and Universal Search

1st Step is – Create a Tracking URL

You can use following link of the Google Analytics for URL Builder

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

You should build campaigns for just about any destination where you pay for advertising. But it is  recommend not to use a custom URL for tracking campaigns, mediums, keywords, traffic sources or content-specific attributes is when you are linking specifically to get keyword-rich links that will improve ranking in organic search results.

Here’s a screenshot of the tool in action and the parameters that are used for tracking visits and goals specifically from Google Places:

2nd Step is – Redirect a Location-Specific URL

This part gets a little complex. The file that exists on the root of most web servers called an .htaccess file tells the browser (and the search engine robots) how to interact and use your website. If your hosting is on a Windows web server, you may need to ask for a special configuration to be able to use .htaccess. Create a redirect for every location you have a Google Places page for. Here’s the syntax:

RedirectPermanent /location Full_Path_to_Custom_URL

Now do this for every location, changing only the campaign name in the custom URL and redirecting URL example:

yoursite.com/location1 > yoursite.com/location1/?…&utm_campaign=location1
yoursite.com/location2 > yoursite.com/location2/?…&utm_campaign=location2
yoursite.com/location3 > yoursite.com/location3/?…&utm_campaign=location3

3rd Step is – Create Two New Profiles in Google Analytics

1. Start by producing a Maps profile and a Universal Search profile. See screenshots below.

2. Choose Add a profile for an existing domain

3. Now for the tricky stuff. In the main Google Analytics Settings screen, click Edit next to the Maps profile.

4. Scroll down to filters and click +Add Filter

5. Use these parameters to create your filter:

Filter Name > Maps
Filter Type > Custom Filter & Include
Filter Type > Filter Field > Referral
Filter Type > Filter Pattern > ‘maps…google…’
Case Sensitive > No

6. Repeat steps 1-4 above for your Universal Search profile and use the following Filter settings:

Filter Name > Universal Search with Full URL
Filter Type > Custom Filter & Advanced
Field A -> Extract A -> Referral -> (.*)oi=local(.*)
Field B -> Extract B -> Referral -> (.*)/.*hl=([a-zA-Z-]+)&?.*q=([a-zA-Z0-9+]+)
Output To -> Constructor -> User Defined -> engine:.$B1 hl:$B2 query:$B3 oi:$A2
Field A Required > Yes
Filed B Required > Yes
Override Output Field > Yes
Case Sensitive > No

With these footsteps above implemented, you’re now all setup to start tracking Google Places in Google Analytics and Google Universal Search data from Google Analytics. To see the data without some of the odd parameters passed in your Universal Search profile, you’re going to want to drill down in your Google Analytics account to Visitors > User Defined.

Then you’ll want to use the search filter for Containing > local*.

For video tutorial click here

Source : http://blogs.myspace.com/seo_expert


Posted in SEO | Tagged: , , , | 7 Comments »

What is Google’s PageRank?

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 25, 2010

What is PageRank?

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google numbers that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page’s importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is taken into account when a page’s PageRank is calculated.
PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determine a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

How is PageRank calculated?

All inbound links of a page are taken into account when Google calculate the PageRank for a page. These are links from within the site and links from outside the site.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

That’s the equation that calculates a page’s PageRank. It’s the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, and it is probable that Google uses a variation of it but they aren’t telling us what it is. It doesn’t matter though, as this equation is good enough.

In the equation ‘t1 – tn’ are pages linking to page A, ‘C’ is the number of outbound links that a page has and ‘d’ is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.

We can think of it in a simpler way:-

a page’s PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to it)

“share” = the linking page’s PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page.

A page “votes” an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.

From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.

If the PageRank value differences between PR1, PR2,…..PR10 were equal then that conclusion would hold up, but many people believe that the values between PR1 and PR10 (the maximum) are set on a logarithmic scale, and there is very good reason for believing it. Nobody outside Google knows for sure one way or the other, but the chances are high that the scale is logarithmic, or similar. If so, it means that it takes a lot more additional PageRank for a page to move up to the next PageRank level that it did to move up from the previous PageRank level. The result is that it reverses the previous conclusion, so that a link from a PR8 page that has lots of outbound links is worth more than a link from a PR4 page that has only a few outbound links.

Whichever scale Google uses, we can be sure of one thing. A link from another site increases our site’s PageRank. Just remember to avoid links from link farms.

Note that when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn’t give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn’t a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page’s PageRank value. It’s like a shareholders meeting where each shareholder votes according to the number of shares held, but the shares themselves aren’t given away. Even so, pages do lose some PageRank indirectly.

Let’s look at how the calculations are really done.

For a page’s calculation, its existing PageRank (if it has any) is abandoned completely and a fresh calculation is done where the page relies solely on the PageRank “voted” for it by its current inbound links, which may have changed since the last time the page’s PageRank was calculated.

The equation shows clearly how a page’s PageRank is arrived at. But what isn’t immediately obvious is that it can’t work if the calculation is done just once. Suppose we have 2 pages, A and B, which link to each other, and neither have any other links of any kind. This is what happens:-

Step 1: Calculate page A’s PageRank from the value of its inbound links

Page A now has a new PageRank value. The calculation used the value of the inbound link from page B. But page B has an inbound link (from page A) and its new PageRank value hasn’t been worked out yet, so page A’s new PageRank value is based on inaccurate data and can’t be accurate.

Step 2: Calculate page B’s PageRank from the value of its inbound links

Page B now has a new PageRank value, but it can’t be accurate because the calculation used the new PageRank value of the inbound link from page A, which is inaccurate.

It’s a Catch 22 situation. We can’t work out A’s PageRank until we know B’s PageRank, and we can’t work out B’s PageRank until we know A’s PageRank.

Now that both pages have newly calculated PageRank values, can’t we just run the calculations again to arrive at accurate values? No. We can run the calculations again using the new values and the results will be more accurate, but we will always be using inaccurate values for the calculations, so the results will always be inaccurate.

The problem is overcome by repeating the calculations many times. Each time produces slightly more accurate values. In fact, total accuracy can never be achieved because the calculations are always based on inaccurate values. 40 to 50 iterations are sufficient to reach a point where any further iterations wouldn’t produce enough of a change to the values to matter. This is precisiely what Google does at each update, and it’s the reason why the updates take so long.

One thing to bear in mind is that the results we get from the calculations are proportions. The figures must then be set against a scale (known only to Google) to arrive at each page’s actual PageRank. Even so, we can use the calculations to channel the PageRank within a site around its pages so that certain pages receive a higher proportion of it than others.

You may come across explanations of PageRank where the same equation is stated but the result of each iteration of the calculation is added to the page’s existing PageRank. The new value (result + existing PageRank) is then used when sharing PageRank with other pages. These explanations are wrong for the following reasons:-

1. They quote the same, published equation – but then change it

from PR(A) = (1-d) + d(……) to PR(A) = PR(A) + (1-d) + d(……)

It isn’t correct, and it isn’t necessary.

2. We will be looking at how to organize links so that certain pages end up with a larger proportion of the PageRank than others. Adding to the page’s existing PageRank through the iterations produces different proportions than when the equation is used as published. Since the addition is not a part of the published equation, the results are wrong and the proportioning isn’t accurate.

According to the published equation, the page being calculated starts from scratch at each iteration. It relies solely on its inbound links. The ‘add to the existing PageRank’ idea doesn’t do that, so its results are necessarily wrong.

Internal linking

Fact: A website has a maximum amount of PageRank that is distributed between its pages by internal links.

The maximum PageRank in a site equals the number of pages in the site * 1. The maximum is increased by inbound links from other sites and decreased by outbound links to other sites. We are talking about the overall PageRank in the site and not the PageRank of any individual page. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can reach the same conclusion by using a pencil and paper and the equation.

Fact: The maximum amount of PageRank in a site increases as the number of pages in the site increases.

The more pages that a site has, the more PageRank it has. Again, by using a pencil and paper and the equation, you can come to the same conclusion. Bear in mind that the only pages that count are the ones that Google knows about.

Fact: By linking poorly, it is possible to fail to reach the site’s maximum PageRank, but it is not possible to exceed it.

Poor internal linkages can cause a site to fall short of its maximum but no kind of internal link structure can cause a site to exceed it. The only way to increase the maximum is to add more inbound links and/or increase the number of pages in the site.

Cautions: Whilst I thoroughly recommend creating and adding new pages to increase a site’s total PageRank so that it can be channeled to specific pages, there are certain types of pages that should not be added. These are pages that are all identical or very nearly identical and are known as cookie-cutters. Google considers them to be spam and they can trigger an alarm that causes the pages, and possibly the entire site, to be penalized. Pages full of good content are a must.

What can we do with this ‘overall’ PageRank?

We are going to look at some example calculations to see how a site’s PageRank can be manipulated, but before doing that, I need to point out that a page will be included in the Google index only if one or more pages on the web link to it. That’s according to Google. If a page is not in the Google index, any links from it can’t be included in the calculations.

For the examples, we are going to ignore that fact, mainly because other ‘Pagerank Explained’ type documents ignore it in the calculations, and it might be confusing when comparing documents. The calculator operates in two modes:- Simple and Real. In Simple mode, the calculations assume that all pages are in the Google index, whether or not any other pages link to them. In Real mode the calculations disregard unlinked-to pages. These examples show the results as calculated in Simple mode.

Let’s consider a 3 page site (pages A, B and C) with no links coming in from the outside. We will allocate each page an initial PageRank of 1, although it makes no difference whether we start each page with 1, 0 or 99. Apart from a few millionths of a PageRank point, after many iterations the end result is always the same. Starting with 1 requires fewer iterations for the PageRanks to converge to a suitable result than when starting with 0 or any other number. You may want to use a pencil and paper to follow this or you can follow it with the calculator.

The site’s maximum PageRank is the amount of PageRank in the site. In this case, we have 3 pages so the site’s maximum is 3.

At the moment, none of the pages link to any other pages and none link to them. If you make the calculation once for each page, you’ll find that each of them ends up with a PageRank of 0.15. No matter how many iterations you run, each page’s PageRank remains at 0.15. The total PageRank in the site = 0.45, whereas it could be 3. The site is seriously wasting most of its potential PageRank.

Example 1

Now begin again with each page being allocated PR1. Link page A to page B and run the calculations for each page. We end up with:-
Page A = 0.15
Page B = 1
Page C = 0.15

Page A has “voted” for page B and, as a result, page B’s PageRank has increased. This is looking good for page B, but it’s only 1 iteration – we haven’t taken account of the Catch 22 situation. Look at what happens to the figures after more iterations:-

After 100 iterations the figures are:-
Page A = 0.15
Page B = 0.2775
Page C = 0.15

It still looks good for page B but nowhere near as good as it did. These figures are more realistic. The total PageRank in the site is now 0.5775 – slightly better but still only a fraction of what it could be.

NOTE:
Technically, these particular results are incorrect because of the special treatment that Google gives to dangling links, but they serve to demonstrate the simple calculation.

Example 2

Try this linkage. Link all pages to all pages. Each page starts with PR1 again. This produces:-
Page A = 1
Page B = 1
Page C = 1

Now we’ve achieved the maximum. No matter how many iterations are run, each page always ends up with PR1. The same results occur by linking in a loop. E.g. A to B, B to C and C to D.

This has demonstrated that, by poor linking, it is quite easy to waste PageRank and by good linking, we can achieve a site’s full potential. But we don’t particularly want all the site’s pages to have an equal share. We want one or more pages to have a larger share at the expense of others. The kinds of pages that we might want to have the larger shares are the index page, hub pages and pages that are optimized for certain search terms. We have only 3 pages, so we’ll channel the PageRank to the index page – page A. It will serve to show the idea of channeling.

Example 3

Now try this. Link page A to both B and C. Also link pages B and C to A. Starting with PR1 all round, after 1 iteration the results are:-
Page A = 1.85
Page B = 0.575
Page C = 0.575

and after 100 iterations, the results are:-
Page A = 1.459459
Page B = 0.7702703
Page C = 0.7702703

In both cases the total PageRank in the site is 3 (the maximum) so none is being wasted. Also in both cases you can see that page A has a much larger proportion of the PageRank than the other 2 pages. This is because pages B and C are passing PageRank to A and not to any other pages. We have channeled a large proportion of the site’s PageRank to where we wanted it.

Example 4

Finally, keep the previous links and add a link from page C to page B. Start again with PR1 all round. After 1 iteration:-
Page A = 1.425
Page B = 1
Page C = 0.575

By comparison to the 1 iteration figures in the previous example, page A has lost some PageRank, page B has gained some and page C stayed the same. Page C now shares its “vote” between A and B. Previously A received all of it. That’s why page A has lost out and why page B has gained. and after 100 iterations:-
Page A = 1.298245
Page B = 0.9999999
Page C = 0.7017543

When the dust has settled, page C has lost a little PageRank because, having now shared its vote between A and B, instead of giving it all to A, A has less to give to C in the A–>C link. So adding an extra link from a page causes the page to lose PageRank indirectly if any of the pages that it links to return the link. If the pages that it links to don’t return the link, then no PageRank loss would have occured. To make it more complicated, if the link is returned even indirectly (via a page that links to a page that links to a page etc), the page will lose a little PageRank. This isn’t really important with internal links, but it does matter when linking to pages outside the site.

Example 5: new pages

Adding new pages to a site is an important way of increasing a site’s total PageRank because each new page will add an average of 1 to the total. Once the new pages have been added, their new PageRank can be channeled to the important pages. We’ll use the calculator to demonstrate these.

Let’s add 3 new pages to Example 3. Three new pages but they don’t do anything for us yet. The small increase in the Total, and the new pages’ 0.15, are unrealistic as we shall see. So let’s link them into the site.

Link each of the new pages to the important page, page A. Notice that the Total PageRank has doubled, from 3 (without the new pages) to 6. Notice also that page A’s PageRank has almost doubled.

There is one thing wrong with this model. The new pages are orphans. They wouldn’t get into Google’s index, so they wouldn’t add any PageRank to the site and they wouldn’t pass any PageRank to page A. They each need to be linked to from at least one other page. If page A is the important page, the best page to put the links on is, surprisingly, page A. You can play around with the links but, from page A’s point of view, there isn’t a better place for them.

It is not a good idea for one page to link to a large number of pages so, if you are adding many new pages, spread the links around. The chances are that there is more than one important page in a site, so it is usually suitable to spread the links to and from the new pages. You can use the calculator to experiment with mini-models of a site to find the best links that produce the best results for its important pages.

Examples summary

You can see that, by organising the internal links, it is possible to channel a site’s PageRank to selected pages. Internal links can be arranged to suit a site’s PageRank needs, but it is only useful if Google knows about the pages, so do try to ensure that Google spiders them.

Inbound and Outbound links

Examples of these could be given but it is probably clearer to read about them (below) and to ‘play’ with them in the calculator.

Questions

When a page has several links to another page, are all the links counted?

E.g. if page A links once to page B and 3 times to page C, does page C receive 3/4 of page A’s shareable PageRank?

The PageRank concept is that a page casts votes for one or more other pages. Nothing is said in the original PageRank document about a page casting more than one vote for a single page. The idea seems to be against the PageRank concept and would certainly be open to manipulation by unrealistically proportioning votes for target pages. E.g. if an outbound link, or a link to an unimportant page, is necessary, add a bunch of links to an important page to minimize the effect.

Since we are unlikely to get a definitive answer from Google, it is reasonable to assume that a page can cast only one vote for another page, and that additional votes for the same page are not counted.

When a page links to itself, is the link counted?

Again, the concept is that pages cast votes for other pages. Nothing is said in the original document about pages casting votes for themselves. The idea seems to be against the concept and, also, it would be another way to manipulate the results. So, for those reasons, it is reasonable to assume that a page can’t vote for itself, and that such links are not counted.

Dangling links

“Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoing links. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these dangling links are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet……….Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly.” – extract from the original PageRank paper by Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.

A dangling link is a link to a page that has no links going from it, or a link to a page that Google hasn’t indexed. In both cases Google removes the links shortly after the start of the calculations and reinstates them shortly before the calculations are finished. In this way, their effect on the PageRank of other pages in minimal.

The results shown in Example 1 (right diag.) are wrong because page B has no links going from it, and so the link from page A to page B is dangling and would be removed from the calculations. The results of the calculations would show all three pages as having 0.15.

It may suit site functionality to link to pages that have no links going from them without losing any PageRank from the other pages but it would be waste of potential PageRank.

Link page A to page E and click Calculate. Notice that the site’s total has gone down very significantly. But, because the new link is dangling and would be removed from the calculations, we can ignore the new total and assume the previous 4.15 to be true. That’s the effect of functionally useful, dangling links in the site. There’s no overall PageRank loss.

However, some of the site’s potential total is still being wasted, so link Page E back to Page A and click Calculate. Now we have the maximum PageRank that is possible with 5 pages. Nothing is being wasted.

Although it may be functionally good to link to pages within the site without those pages linking out again, it is bad for PageRank. It is pointless wasting PageRank unnecessarily, so always make sure that every page in the site links out to at least one other page in the site.

Inbound links

Inbound links (links into the site from the outside) are one way to increase a site’s total PageRank. The other is to add more pages. Where the links come from doesn’t matter. Google recognizes that a webmaster has no control over other sites linking into a site, and so sites are not penalized because of where the links come from. There is an exception to this rule but it is rare and doesn’t concern this article. It isn’t something that a webmaster can accidentally do.

The linking page’s PageRank is important, but so is the number of links going from that page. For instance, if you are the only link from a page that has a lowly PR2, you will receive an injection of 0.15 + 0.85(2/1) = 1.85 into your site, whereas a link from a PR8 page that has another 99 links from it will increase your site’s PageRank by 0.15 + 0.85(7/100) = 0.2095. Clearly, the PR2 link is much better – or is it?

Once the PageRank is injected into your site, the calculations are done again and each page’s PageRank is changed. Depending on the internal link structure, some pages’ PageRank is increased, some are unchanged but no pages lose any PageRank.

It is beneficial to have the inbound links coming to the pages to which you are channeling your PageRank. A PageRank injection to any other page will be spread around the site through the internal links. The important pages will receive an increase, but not as much of an increase as when they are linked to directly. The page that receives the inbound link, makes the biggest gain.

It is easy to think of our site as being a small, self-contained network of pages. When we do the PageRank calculations we are dealing with our small network. If we make a link to another site, we lose some of our network’s PageRank, and if we receive a link, our network’s PageRank is added to. But it isn’t like that. For the PageRank calculations, there is only one network – every page that Google has in its index. Each iteration of the calculation is done on the entire network and not on individual websites.

Because the entire network is interlinked, and every link and every page plays its part in each iteration of the calculations, it is impossible for us to calculate the effect of inbound links to our site with any realistic accuracy.

Outbound links

Outbound links are a drain on a site’s total PageRank. They leak PageRank. To counter the drain, try to ensure that the links are reciprocated. Because of the PageRank of the pages at each end of an external link, and the number of links out from those pages, reciprocal links can gain or lose PageRank. You need to take care when choosing where to exchange links.

When PageRank leaks from a site via a link to another site, all the pages in the internal link structure are affected. (This doesn’t always show after just 1 iteration). The page that you link out from makes a difference to which pages suffer the most loss. Without a program to perform the calculations on specific link structures, it is difficult to decide on the right page to link out from, but the generalization is to link from the one with the lowest PageRank.

Many websites need to contain some outbound links that are nothing to do with PageRank. Unfortunately, all ‘normal’ outbound links leak PageRank. But there are ‘abnormal’ ways of linking to other sites that don’t result in leaks. PageRank is leaked when Google recognizes a link to another site. The answer is to use links that Google doesn’t recognize or count. These include form actions and links contained in javascript code.

Form actions
A form’s ‘action’ attribute does not need to be the url of a form parsing script. It can point to any html page on any site. Try it.

Example:
<form action=”http://www.domain.com/somepage.html”>
<a href=”javascript:document.myform.submit()”>Click here</a>

To be really sneaky, the action attribute could be in some javascript code rather than in the form tag, and the javascript code could be loaded from a ‘js’ file stored in a directory that is barred to Google’s spider by the robots.txt file.

Javascript
Example: <a href=”javascript:goto(‘wherever’)”>Click here</a>

Like the form action, it is sneaky to load the javascript code, which contains the urls, from a seperate ‘js’ file, and sneakier still if the file is stored in a directory that is barred to googlebot by the robots.txt file.

The “rel” attribute
As of 18th January 2005, Google, together with other search engines, is recognising a new attribute to the anchor tag. The attribute is “rel”, and it is used as follows:-

<a href=”http://www.domain.com/somepage.html” rel=”nofollow”>link text</a>

The attribute tells Google to ignore the link completely. The link won’t help the target page’s PageRank, and it won’t help its rankings. It is as though the link doesn’t exist. With this attribute, there is no longer any need for javascript, forms, or any other method of hiding links from Google.

PageRank we need to move up the toolbar

First, let me explain in more detail why the values shown in the Google toolbar are not the actual PageRank figures. According to the equation, and to the creators of Google, the billions of pages on the web average out to a PageRank of 1.0 per page. So the total PageRank on the web is equal to the number of pages on the web * 1, which equals a lot of PageRank spread around the web.

The Google toolbar range is from 1 to 10. (They sometimes show 0, but that figure isn’t believed to be a PageRank calculation result). What Google does is divide the full range of actual PageRanks on the web into 10 parts – each part is represented by a value as shown in the toolbar. So the toolbar values only show what part of the overall range a page’s PageRank is in, and not the actual PageRank itself. The numbers in the toolbar are just labels.

Whether or not the overall range is divided into 10 equal parts is a matter for debate – Google aren’t saying. But because it is much harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end than it is at the lower end, many people (including me) believe that the divisions are based on a logarithmic scale, or something very similar, rather than the equal divisions of a linear scale.

Let’s assume that it is a logarithmic, base 10 scale, and that it takes 10 properly linked new pages to move a site’s important page up 1 toolbar point. It will take 100 new pages to move it up another point, 1000 new pages to move it up one more, 10,000 to the next, and so on. That’s why moving up at the lower end is much easier that at the higher end.

In reality, the base is unlikely to be 10. Some people think it is around the 5 or 6 mark, and maybe even less. Even so, it still gets progressively harder to move up a toolbar point at the higher end of the scale.

Note that as the number of pages on the web increases, so does the total PageRank on the web, and as the total PageRank increases, the positions of the divisions in the overall scale must change. As a result, some pages drop a toolbar point for no ‘apparent’ reason. If the page’s actual PageRank was only just above a division in the scale, the addition of new pages to the web would cause the division to move up slightly and the page would end up just below the division. Google’s index is always increasing and they re-evaluate each of the pages on more or less a monthly basis. It’s known as the “Google dance”. When the dance is over, some pages will have dropped a toolbar point. A number of new pages might be all that is needed to get the point back after the next dance.

The toolbar value is a good indicator of a page’s PageRank but it only indicates that a page is in a certain range of the overall scale. One PR5 page could be just above the PR5 division and another PR5 page could be just below the PR6 division – almost a whole division (toolbar point) between them.

Tips

Domain names and Filenames

To a spider, www.domain.com/, domain.com/, www.domain.com/index.html and domain.com/index.html are different urls and, therefore, different pages. Surfers arrive at the site’s home page whichever of the urls are used, but spiders see them as individual urls, and it makes a difference when working out the PageRank. It is better to standardize the url you use for the site’s home page. Otherwise each url can end up with a different PageRank, whereas all of it should have gone to just one url.

If you think about it, how can a spider know the filename of the page that it gets back when requesting www.domain.com/ ? It can’t. The filename could be index.html, index.htm, index.php, default.html, etc. The spider doesn’t know. If you link to index.html within the site, the spider could compare the 2 pages but that seems unlikely. So they are 2 urls and each receives PageRank from inbound links. Standardizing the home page’s url ensures that the Pagerank it is due isn’t shared with ghost urls.

Example: Go to UK Holidays and UK Holiday Accommodation[http://www.holidays.org.uk/] site – how’s that for a nice piece of link text ;) . Notice that the url in the browser’s address bar contains “www.”. If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you will see that the page has PR5. Now remove the “www.” part of the url and get the page again. This time it has PR1, and yet they are the same page. Actually, the PageRank is for the unseen frameset page.

When this article was first written, the non-www URL had PR4 due to using different versions of the link URLs within the site. It had the effect of sharing the page’s PageRank between the 2 pages (the 2 versions) and, therefore, between the 2 sites. That’s not the best way to do it. Since then, I’ve tidied up the internal linkages and got the non-www version down to PR1 so that the PageRank within the site mostly stays in the “www.” version, but there must be a site somewhere that links to it without the “www.” that’s causing the PR1.

Imagine the page, www.domain.com/index.html. The index page contains links to several relative urls; e.g. products.html and details.html. The spider sees those urls as www.domain.com/products.html and www.domain.com/details.html. Now let’s add an absolute url for another page, only this time we’ll leave out the “www.” part – domain.com/anotherpage.html. This page links back to the index.html page, so the spider sees the index pages as domain.com/index.html. Although it’s the same index page as the first one, to a spider, it is a different page because it’s on a different domain. Now look what happens. Each of the relative urls on the index page is also different because it belongs to the domain.com/ domain. Consequently, the link stucture is wasting a site’s potential PageRank by spreading it between ghost pages.
Adding new pages

There is a possible negative effect of adding new pages. Take a perfectly normal site. It has some inbound links from other sites and its pages have some PageRank. Then a new page is added to the site and is linked to from one or more of the existing pages. The new page will, of course, aquire PageRank from the site’s existing pages. The effect is that, whilst the total PageRank in the site is increased, one or more of the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss due to the new page making gains. Up to a point, the more new pages that are added, the greater is the loss to the existing pages. With large sites, this effect is unlikely to be noticed but, with smaller ones, it probably would.

So, although adding new pages does increase the total PageRank within the site, some of the site’s pages will lose PageRank as a result. The answer is to link new pages is such a way within the site that the important pages don’t suffer, or add sufficient new pages to make up for the effect (that can sometimes mean adding a large number of new pages), or better still, get some more inbound links.

by Phil Craven

Posted in SEO | Tagged: , , , | 17 Comments »

Salesforce.com – the New Social Network for Businesses

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 23, 2010

Salesforce – the dominant customer resource management (CRM) system is used by more than 77,000 businesses.

Salesforce has set up a social and collaborative function for its users called “Chatter” to response the increasing social nature of the web and the need for collaboration.

Chatter permits users to create a community within their business, just similar to a combination of Google Wave, Twitter and Facebook, that can be used for safe teamwork and knowledge-sharing.

The people who already have a Salesforce account can use this application without any charges, but it is available for a $15 per user fee to businesses that don’t already use Salesforce, albeit with limited features.

Check out these key features and drawbacks to decide if Chatter is right for your business or not…

1: Follow Documents as Well as People

This feature is awesome for teams collaborating on a big presentation or proposal. Whether it’s a PDF, PowerPoint, or Word doc, and respond with guidance or comments to your colleagues in real time, you can receive updates on the progress of any document. This is a killer app for businesses that have dispersed workforces.

2: Follow Specific Service Records or Sales Cycles

As it gives a top-level view of the progress on all key accounts, the Managers especially may find this tool useful. Tracking the lifecycle of a customer service request or sales prospect is an incredibly valuable feature of Chatter. For attributing activity to individual employees, this is also a useful tool.

3: Integrate Twitter Data into Your Profile

From within your broader Salesforce profile, you can easily follow companies or individuals updates on twitter. You can notice the latest news from businesses while processing additional deliverables for that company.

4: Collaborate Securely

Using public social network tools to collaborate can leave important proprietary information out in the open, which no business wants to do. Chatter enables the same ease of use and accessibility of public social networks, but all collaboration takes place in Salesforce’s secure cloud, which tens of thousands of businesses already trust with highly sensitive information.

5: Post Status Updates Within Salesforce

Knowing what your key employees and teammates are doing during the workday can dramatically increase productivity and the quality of work, as this ability lowers distractions and enables more knowledge-sharing.

But…

1: You Need to Be a Salesforce User for Full Access

Salesforce licenses cost more than $700 per user per year for the professional version. If your business is not using Salesforce currently, this can be a hefty investment. Also, non-sales employees likely do not have licenses for Salesforce, which could restrict the benefits you gain from beginning to use Chatter for projects.

2: Best for Mostly Large Organizations

Because it is an enterprise-grade solution for an enterprise-grade sales management platform, very large businesses have the most to gain from implementing Chatter. Smaller firms with fewer locations have less need for this sort of collaboration, and moderately priced solutions like 37Signals’ Basecamp and Campfire might by better-suited to their needs.

For sales organizations to get more social and community-oriented with their sales approach, Chatter feels like a big step in the right direction. This application can decrease your duplicated work, increase the efficiency and speed at which a sales team acts on opportunities and improve internal communications. Chatter is powerful enough to deserve further exploration of your business needs, though it’s rather costly and probably more useful for large businesses.

Ref : Peter Wylie

Posted in SEO | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Short Promotional Videos To Increase Your Sales

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 23, 2010

Short Promotional Videos Can Increase Your Sales…

Promotional videos can increase sales of your company.  But, if advertising videos are not created in properly, you can kiss your product conversions goodbye.

Few steps you should keep in mind before creating promotional videos…

1. Prepare a Promo Video plan

There is lots of software available that can be used, to create basic promotional videos. Some videos are good for branding, some are good for selling. So prepare your videos according to your need.

2. Create a Good Video Script

Write good video scripts that impress anyone just in first view.

3. Voiceovers
Whatever the person talks are known as voiceover.  A bad voiceover can damage your whole promotional video.  If the voice and audio quality stinks, viewers won’t like it. It  It’s highly recommended that you hire a professional voiceover to do this.

4. Sound and Visual Elements
In adding up to the key element, the voiceover, sound and visual elements do indeed help your conversions.  Good voiceover with emotion invoking sound and visual elements, will help greatly.  You can get highly recommended sites to find cool soundtracks, and visual elements on a low budget.

5. Putting it all together
Adding good video effects, transitions, with synchronized audio voiceover track, soundtrack, and the visual elements together, can improve your video quality.

6. Create a landing page
Create a landing page for your video. You can put a video on your landing page or on sales page.  You can also upload it to Youtube.

From: Reginald Alston

Posted in Video SEO | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

Internet Marketing using Youtube

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 20, 2010

Youtube is a high traffic site, many videos inside are with their own web site and contact visits if the video is very large, relatively speaking site traffic will grow.

A few things that should keep in mind…

1.Keep your videos short & sweet. Viewers attention span is getting shorter and shorter these days.

2.Learn from the best. Look for the most popular videos in your area (By searching “Internet Marketing” for example) and emulate their techniques. See what tags and keywords they’ve used.

3.Always include a Call to Action at the top/end or throught your video. You can include the URL of your squeeze page as a watermark over your video or edit it into the end of your video.

4.Trigger their curiosity. Whatever it is you’re promoting, give the information they need and make it enticing, but make them want to come over to your site to get the real deal.

5.Always include your URL in the description box.
On YouTube it’s the area underneath the video. The reason being is that you not only get users to click through your URL but you also get a high PR backlink to your site which is invaluable for your page ranking.

6.Making a video can be as simple as creating a Powerpoint (Or Keynote if you’re on a Mac) presentation and then recording yourself with Camtasia/Camstudio/Jing talking through it. That’s what most gurus do.. Alternatively you can write an article and find a ‘gig’ on Fiverr.com of someone who’d convert it to a video for you, for $5.

7.Once the video is on-air, don’t just leave it ‘in the cold’. It won’t just start generating a gazillion of views out of thin air. Spend some effort on pushing it up. Go to Fiverr or Odesk and get real people to view your video and comment on it. Social bookmark it or outsource that task as well. Harness the power of social media and tweet about it or pay for others to tweet it (Fiverr is high on social media). Embed the video on your blog and social bookmark it. And of course, wherever you post your video, ping it on Pingler or Pingoat. And ping your social bookmarks as well.

Source : http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1909734

Optimize Video for Search Engine Visibility… Read More

Posted in Video SEO | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Social Media’s Impact & influence

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 19, 2010

Social media has grown massively and has changed the landscape of information exchange and communication. Social Media isn’t limited just to Facebook and Twitter only. It incorporates a whole network of sites where users can work together with one another whether it is by sharing information or discussing various topics. Some of the more popular social media sites are Digg (Share Links & News), Stumbleupon (Share & Discover Websites), Delicious (Share Favorites), Wikipedia (Share Information), Flickr (Share Pictures), Blogging (Share Anything), YouTube (Share Videos), Linkedin (Professional Social Network) and so on.

Some Important Social Media Statistics

  • 3 out of 4 Americans utilize social technology
  • 2/3rd of Global Internet Population Visit Social Networks
  • Social Sites – 4th most popular online activity, ahead of personal email
  • Time Spent on Social Networks growing at 3x overall internet rate.

“Technology is shifting the power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s people who are in control” Rubert Murdock, Global Media Entrepreneur”

  • 13 Hours of video uploaded on YouTube every minute
  • 412.3 years – length of time it would take to view every YouTube video
  • 100,000,000 – # of YouTube videos viewed per day
  • 13,000,000 – # of articles on Wikipedia
  • 3,600,000 – # of photos archived on Flickr.com as of June 2009
  • 1382% – Monthly Growth Rate of Twitter Jan to Feb 2009
  • 3,000,000 Tweets per Day on Twitter
  • 5,000,000,000 – # of minutes spent on Facebook every day
  • 1,000,000,000 – # of content (web links, news, blogs post, photos etc) share on Facebook each week

“The word blog is irrelevant. What’s important is that it is now common, and will soon be expected, that every intelligent person (and quite a few unintelligent ones) will have a media platform where they share what they care about with the world.” Seth Godin, Author

  • 5,000,000 – # of active Barack Obama supporters across 15 social networks
  • 14,200,000 – # of views Obama’s “Yes we can video” got on YouTube
  • $6,500,000 – Amount of money donated online to Obama’s campaign
  • Facebook in terms of members would be the 8th most populated county in the world. (Mark Zuckerberg, Jan 2009)
  • By July 2009, it has risen to 4th (via video)

About Most Popular Social Media

Facebook

  • Facebook keeps it’s stats page updated, and boasts over 350mm users. Facebook, ongoing
  • Facebook has announced 400mm users, Feb 5, 2010.
  • Infographic on Auguts 2009 Facebook stats, including usage, size, adoption rates by Mashable, on Feb 12.
  • Facebook demonstrates growth in total number of visitors (now over Yahoo, for second place) and a high degree of attention (time on site) “Facebook has surged past Yahoo as the number two most popular site in the U.S., drawing nearly 134 Million Unique Visitors in January, 2010. It’s been two full years since we’ve seen a shakeup at the top – In February, 2008, Google overtook Yahoo as number one, and never looked back.” Compete, Feb 18, 2010
  • Usage of casual gaming (Farmville, mafia wars) is suggested to be by moms.  A PopCap survey reports that “The PopCap study showed that 55 percent of all social gamers in the U.S. are women, as are almost 60 percent of those in the UK. The average age in the U.S. is 48, which is substantially older than the 38-year-old average in the UK, and 46 percent of American social gamers are 50 or older, compared with just 23 percent in the UK. Only 6 percent of all social gamers are age 21 or younger.”  Via GigaOm, Feb 18
  • Facebook visitors to other sites are apparently more sticky  at least by a few margin points: “To offer one example, 81% of visits to CNN.com in the week to March 6, 2010 were returning visitors while 84% of visitors to CNN.com that came from Facebook.com were returning visitors and 72% from Google News were returning visitors.”  One could argue that these Facebook users are more engaged, or content that is recommended to them by friends is more relevant. Hitwise, March 18
  • Facebook has cross the 500mm user mark, see blog post from CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, July 21, 2010
  • Top countries adopting Facebook: United States, UK, Indonesia, see stats from Royal Pingdom, August, 2010

LinkedIn

  • Now has 60mm users, “Over the past year, network has seen a significant amount of growth, especially internationally. As of last December, the network had 55 million members, so its grown by 5 million in less than two months. In October, LinkedIn’s network’s CEO, Jeff Weiner, said in the post that half of LinkedIn’s membership is international. ” reports Techcrunch, Feb 11

Tagged

  • All data told to me by Tagged directly on March 24 by ssarner at tagged.com
  • Statistics: Total Registered Users: 100 Million
  • Global Monthly Unique Visitors: 16 million
  • USA Monthly Unique Visitors: 6 million
  • Daily Users: 3.5 million
  • Monthly Page Views: 7 billion
  • Attention USA (comScore) Average Minutes per Visit: 12.2 – #1 social network
  • Total Monthly Minutes: 796 Million – #3 social network
  • 10 million new friend connections made everyday
  • Tagged “Meet Me” application produces 40 million daily page views
  • Over 100,000 user generated virtual gifts, TAGS and skins available.
  • Average of 75,000 – 100,000 new daily registrants

Twitter

  • Hubspot luanches a report of Twitter.com registrations and shows a decrease in rate of adoption. There’s also useful data within the report about followers and their behaviors based on a sample methodology. Hubspot, Jan 19, 2010.
  • Sysmos launched a report about global usage of Twitter, with most adoption in US. Interesting that the key nugget is “… the number of U.S. unique users was 50.8%, a sharp drop from 62.1% in June. This suggests the use of Twitter outside the U.S. has experienced significant growth over the past six months.”, Jan 14th, Sysmos. Thanks Jean in the comments for the submission.
  • Data indicates that many Twitter users are not active. read “The number of Twitter users has climbed to a lofty 75 million, but the growth rate of new users is slowing and a lot of current Twitterers are inactive” ComputerWorld, Jan 28
  • Twitter themselves finally publish numbers indicating there are 50mm tweets created each day.  ”Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second. (Yes, we have TPS reports.)” Twitter, Feb 22
  • Twitter co-owner Biz Stone has revealed that the site now has 105 million registered users. He revealed the startling number at a Twitter developer conference, aptly title Chirp, and also mentioned that 30,000 people a day are signing up to tweet. Techradar, from Twitter, April 14
  • Black people, who account for about 12% of the population in general, make up 25% of the Twitter population. Business Insider May 2010

Yelp

  • As Yelp has grown from fledgling start-up to critical mass website, serving over 30 million visitors a month. Brainstorm tech, April .

YouTube

  • Find out who is creating the top YouTube videos and who is embedding them. “The study also looked at the demographics of bloggers who embed these videos. In general, 20-to-35-year-old bloggers embed most of the videos (57%), followed by teenagers (20%) and bloggers over 35 (20%).” Including stats on average number of comments, duration and other tidbits, Read Write Web, Feb 15.

Mobile, Desktop and Social Networks

  • There’s a sea change in more people using social networks from mobile devices rather than desktop clients “more people are using the mobile web to socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. It appears that the mobile phone is actually a better platform for social networking than the PC.”  Ruder Fin via Read Write Web, Feb 2010
WORLD’S* MOST POPULAR BRANDS ONLINE / April 2010
Brand % of World’s Internet Population visiting brand Time per person (hh:mm:ss)
Google 82% 1:21:51
MSN/WindowsLive/Bing 62% 2:41:49
Facebook 54% 6:00:00
Yahoo! 53% 1:50:16
Microsoft 48% 0:45:31
YouTube 47% 0:57:33
Wikipedia 35% 0:13:26
AOL Media Network 27% 2:01:02
eBay 26% 1:34:08
Apple 26% 1:00:28
Source: The Nielsen Company

*Global refers to AU, BR, CH, DE, ES, FR, IT, UK & USA only

Reach and Usage by Country / Apr 2010 (Home & Work)
Social Networking / Blog Sites
Country % Reach of Active Users Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)
Brazil 86% 5:03:37
Italy 78% 6:28:41
Spain 77% 5:11:44
Japan 75% 2:50:50
United States 74% 6:35:02
United Kingdom 74% 5:52:38
France 73% 4:10:27
Australia 72% 7:19:13
Germany 63% 4:13:05
Switzerland 59% 3:43:58
Source: The Nielsen Company

Facebook Reach and Usage by Country / Apr 2010 (Home & Work)
Country % Reach of Active Users Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)
Italy 66% 7:00:21
Australia 63% 7:45:28
United States 62% 6:43:22
United Kingdom 62% 6:19:59
Spain 57% 4:04:53
France 57% 4:33:05
Switzerland 45% 4:18:47
Germany 27% 3:42:50
Brazil 26% 1:46:50
Japan 3% 0:31:38
Source: The Nielsen Company

To know more, please visit –

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/social-media-accounts-for-22-percent-of-time-online/

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/01/19/a-collection-of-social-network-stats-for-2010/

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

Measure Twitter Influence & Reach with Tools

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 17, 2010

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging site, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which enables its users to share information. User can send and read other user’s messages. In Twitter updates are called tweets.

Do you want to know how effectively you have been communicating with your followers? Then just use these online tools that will help you find out your reach, communication effectiveness, popularity and analyze your twitter usage statistics.

  • Observe whom you Re-Tweet most / active hours etc

Tool name – TweetStats. Finds your twitter frequency, whom you re-tweet most, whom you reply to most, what times you tweet most and lots more.

  • Find out your Reader Outreach Power

Twitter Analyzer gives you data such as your tweet frequency on a graph, tweet re-tweet count, Readers Reach etc.

  • In which Tweet gained you followers and which made you lose them

Tweet Effect dishes out data not seen in many other tools. This tool tells you how many followers you’ve lost in the last X hours, how many you gained during that time. And also an idea of the tweets that might have helped you gain OR lose followers.

  • Measure your Social Capital, Velocity and Centralization on Twitter

Reach, Velocity and Social Capital. Twinfluence helps you find three major factors that control your influence and power on Twitter.

  • Detect who’s the popular Twitter user in your country/ region

Twitter Grader – notify you who’s the best in the region based on number of followers, communication, retweets, influence etc. A far more effective calculation compared to other such tools.

  • Observe your average Twitter usage over a period of time

Tweet Rush will help you in finding out your twitter usage stats, how long, when and how often do you tweet at a particular time period.

  • Note your Twitter Rank

Twitter Rank will give you a “Twitter Rank” based on your trust quotient or something similar.

  • Find out how many people you reached via your tweets

Use Tweet Reach to analyze how many impressions your tweets got in a particular time frame.

  • Get your influence, signal-noise ratio and velocity

Twitlyzer is an excellent tool, that calculates your influence, quality and velocity of tweets. It allows you to compare the stats with other users and generate charts !

Written by Mani Karthik

For more information, please visit http://www.dailybloggr.com/2009/06/9-tools-to-measure-your-twitter-influence-reach/

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Measure Your Social Media Impact

Posted by Dhrub Raaj on August 17, 2010

The good news is social media has finally made it to the grand stage of “accountability.” Brand awareness is a measure of how recognizable your brand is to your target audience. How many people could you have reached with your message?

At first, determine your social reach. The measurements highlight the number of people you’ve attracted to your brand through social media. To moderate the potential for repetition of users, track growth rate as a percentage of the aggregate totals. This is where you will find the real diamonds.

  • Twitter: To determine the monthly potential reach, look at your number of followers and the number of followers for those who retweeted your message. You should track these separately and then compare the month-over-month growth rate of each of these metrics so you can determine where you’re seeing the most growth. A great free tool to use for Twitter measurement is TweetReach.
  • Facebook: Just track the total number of friends for your brand page. In adding up, review the number of fans from those who became fans during a specified period of time or during a promotion and those who commented on or liked your posts to identify the potential monthly Facebook reach.  Facebook Insights provides value here.
  • YouTube: Measure the number of views for videos tied to an endorsement or specific period of time, such as monthly, and the total number of subscribers.
  • Blog: Measure the number of visitors who viewed the posts during a specific period of time or promotion.
  • Email: Look at how many people are on the distribution list and how many actually received the email.

Then measure how many people actually did something with your message, how many people actually cared enough about what you had to say to result in some kind of action.

Fortunately engagement is fairly easy to measure with simple tools such as Radian 6, Biz360 and TweetEffect. These metrics highlight who you want to target to retain on social media channels.

For a starting list of key performance indicators for engagement, this post by Chris Lake is a great start.

  • Twitter: Enumerate the number of times your links were clicked, your message was retweeted, and your hashtag was used and then look at how many people were responsible for the activity. Also track @replies and direct messages if you can link them to campaign activity.
  • Facebook: Find out the number of times your links were clicked and your messages were liked or commented on. Then break this down by how many people created this activity. You can also track wall posts and private messages if you can link them to activity that is directly tied to a specific social media campaign.
  • YouTube: Assess the number of comments on your video, the number of times it was rated, the number of times it was shared and the number of new subscribers.
  • Blog: Evaluate the number of comments, the number of subscribers generated and finally the number of times the posts were shared and “where” they were shared (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.). Measure how many third-party blogs you commented on and the resulting referral traffic to your site.
  • Email: Calculate how many people opened, clicked and shared your email. Include where the items were shared, similar to the point above. Also, keep track of the number of new subscriptions generated.

After that measure your social influence. Influence is a subjective metric that relies on your company’s perspective for definition. In other words, did your campaign influence positive vibes toward the brand or did it create bad mojo?

You can use tools like Twitalyzer, Social Mention, Radian 6 or ScoutLabs to make it a little easier, but do a manual check to validate any sentiment results. Influence is generally displayed as a percentage of positive, neutral and negative sentiment, which is then applied in relation to the engagement metrics and to the metrics for reach where applicable.

A great application for influence is to look at the influence by those who engaged with your brand in the above categories.

After you’ve measured through the influence portion of the funnel, you’re now creeping into where too many companies are starting their measurement efforts: the lead generation funnel. This is where the brand awareness portion of the funnel ends and the traditional ROI-driven action begins.

Fig- Exposure, influence and engagement represent brand awareness in the measurement funnel.

Understanding your reach, engagement and influence through these primary social channels will allow you to define your presence and impact, which can then be applied as a model to other social networks.

After you’ve tracked all of this information, make it meaningful. You can use Excel as a great tool to organize your data. Build yourself a standard dashboard in Excel that highlights the key metrics that matter to the organization. Create a tab for a high-level overview of multiple campaigns, and a tab for each campaign for the time period you’re reporting on. Ultimately, you should put the information into the same format that you’ve used to report on traditional brand awareness campaigns, with social media as just another vehicle in the overall marketing mix.

By Nichole Kelly

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