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 Way more complex than you need Ok, so you’re tacking a blog onto your site to (1) quickly get breaking news about your products and company online and (2) boost SEO. We all know that (2) is the REAL reason you’re adding that blog onto your corporate site. You want to get on the first page of Google for certain search terms. Good plan! In fact, it’s such a great plan that EVERYONE else on the internet is doing the same thing.So what can you do to get in front of your competition?
First off you can use the latest version WordPress. WordPress does optimized URI rewriting and about a hundred other little things that rocket it to the front on the long list of blog platforms. Next, you should automate site map submission to Google, Ask, Bing, Yahoo, and 5 or 10 minor players plus the new challengers that pop up weekly (and get shot down almost as quickly — anybody remember that massive market changer, Cuil?). You can line up your Twitter feed to stream to the main page of the blog.
In short, simple layouts rule. Make your blog as visually simple as possible. Any fancy tricks (like the java tag cloud over there on the right which we are in love with) are just going to slow down your blog and MAY prevent it from getting indexed.
That leads me to my next point. Get it live and online ASAP. If you are building or re-building your main site, get the blog up and indexed before all the main dev is done. It’s gaining search engine traction while you’re testing and making final mods to your site. Even if you decide not to take the blog live, you can always line up 15 or 20 posts. With WordPress 2.6 & newer, you can schedule your posts to auto-magically go live on a specified date. So you drink two or three cups of that crazy Vietnamese coffee that has quadruple the caffeine and write them all in one mad literary sprint. Then stagger out the publish dates.
If you keep the blog layout simple, you’re going to get it online faster. You won’t waste time debugging complex interface issues. The simpler the layout, generally the more compatible it is with blog platform upgrades and plugins. I’ve worked with some very complex WordPress themes. After we add some plugins, the really crazy animated multi-columns themes will inevitably break — and that is just during the initial build. Complex themes and heavily customized layouts limit forward compatibility. Weigh that carefully.
Finally, use your blog. Post to it consistently. Especially at the beginning, daily posts that are rich in relevant keywords are the key to success. You can slow down once you have a couple hundred posts. Seriously.
Now with all that said, do you REALLY want that fancy layout???
Dozens of press releases, countless emails and calls to editors then sometimes you just get lucky. Like my photo and a topLingo shout out on the OC Metro homepage type of lucky.
Hi I’m Mike. Co-owner of topLingo and meet me on OCMetro.com’s new social network for Orange County business professionals. Recently launched, this network is a hybrid between LinkedIn and Facebook and proof that “niche’s” can work.
J.D. Power & Associates did a study for automotive manufacturer websites. They found that users were more likely to buy a car IF the manufacturer’s website put the data — especially pricing — about models in the forefront and kept the fancy flash interface elements (virtual test drives, 360 degree rotations) to a minimum. Also of note, speed of the website contributed greatly to user satisfaction. Hmmmm, does this really surprise anybody? At least this is great validation for the usability mantra we’ve been chanting for the last 3 or 4 years. Link to study here.
Incidentally, they came up with a median rating for the industry. I’m proud to say we worked on part of Kia’s online dealer training and they are above the median score. The Big 3 were below the median … yikes, and they wonder why they need bailout money. I bet they spend millions on their websites with litte regard for usability. “Chairman, we need more rotating Ram Pickups!” Resounding yesses from around the big cherrywood conference table. Stocks plummet.
It’s no longer cool to have a brown box on your Twitter profile.
Way back in March just HAVING a Twitter account said “savvy”.  Now the marketing mavens are branding the holy lights out of all things “Tweet” and Twitter’s gone main stream.
Here’s some examples of what I’m talking about:
Executives, and the publications that target them, are talking non-stop about how Twitter should be leveraged in the enterprise - as in this video of CIO’s from Home Depot, Baxter, and Yahoo, and this CIO Magazine article “Twitter’s Potential for Business Users“, and in newly coined vernacular like “Real Time Monitoring” used by Lenny Mendonca in this Think Big video.
For a great example of how one brand is leveraging Twitter to extend its brand reach, increase goodwill, and improve customer service, check out Whole Foods. (Thanks Denise, @denisess for tweeting this).
How to leverage Twitter for your enterprise is a fundamental strategy question that should be carefully studied by your organization’s executive team.
The take away message is this: Ignoring Twitter is a way to get noticed - only not the way you want.
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P.S. Your mid to large size organization may qualify for a free 60 minute executive workshop customized to your brand. Contact topLingo
You wouldn’t believe how many times a day we’re asked about the Google search results page. So here’s a quick primer on the 6 key elements of a local search result. 
1. The first section is the search box, which for local searches will contain a reference to city and state or other geographic limiter such as zip code.
2. The second section is the “Sponsored Links” that appears at the top of page. To show up here, you first have to open up a Google AdWords account. Once you’re set up with AdWords, your ad has a chance of being placed here if you’ve bid high enough for the search term and your “Quality Score” assigned by Google is high enough. (Quality Score has to do with click through rates, website quality, reviews, and whatever else Google feels like jamming into their algorithm).
3. The third section is the Local Business Results listing, which shows the top 10 most relevant web sites according to Google’s algorithm. For your business to be considered for placement here, you must first add a free business listing on the Google Maps Local Business Center page and then mail back the confirmation snail mail you recieve.
4. The fourth section is known as the “Organic Listings” section. There have been volumes written and fortunes spent vying for top listings here. First, your site has to be architected with excellent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fundamentals, must have rich search content, attained a venerable age, be getting lots of good traffic, have the right inbound links, and yada, yada, yada.
5. Section five shows you how competitive your search term is. Google in the example shown determined that 199,000 web pages were relevant to “house cleaning in Irvine California”. That’s more than two for every house and apartment in the city, but still less than a similar search for doctors and plumbers.
6. And finally section six lists additional Sponsored Links. The listing order is again determined by price bid plus quality score.
So there you have it – a primer for deciphering the Google search results page. For more information about this page from Google itself, go here. This introduction is brought to you by topLingo development, delivering over 400 custom web development projects for large and small companies since April of 2001. We create traffic…the good kind™.
We’re not talking about the Carl’s Jr. chili burger mess on that guys face. We’re talking about how your visitors are going to find what they’re looking for on your web site.
Google offers a very low cost - $100 a year - custom edition search engine called the “Business Edition“. (50,000 page sites cost more).
The coolest thing is that you can fit Google Search Business Edition seamlessly into your site - sans the “Powered by Google” logo - and with no results page ads. To completely customize the look and feel around your core branding instead of theirs, Google offers an XML API.
So the topLingo tip for today is: Google Custom Search Business Edition with the XML API is the way to go if your site needs a commercial grade search that won’t detract from your core branding.
Now you got it. Now you’re good.
Spam email chafes. It’s like wet sand in your bathing suit. It’s the electronic version of a freeway driver flipping you off - not with gestures - but with daily offers of stuff you don’t want - or worse - things that offend you.
We’ve all received ‘em: solicitations for Canadian drugs, cheap software, implants, enlargements, and the list goes on ad nauseum - leaving the email reading public irked and in extreme cases “spam enraged”. Still, good people are often surprised to discover that their own websites may be unwittingly contributing to the problem. Contributing how, you ask?
One way is by publishing email addresses in plain view on their sites. Bots (robot programs) crawl the web constantly, harvesting addresses that are sitting on websites screaming to be hijacked. To the naked eye, these addresses look something like this: john.sales@mycompany.com. To bots they look like this: mailto: john.sales@mycompany.com.
For the uninitiated, Mailto: is html code that instructs the browser to open a window in the users default email client - e.g. Microsoft Outlook- and insert the address from the web page. So by searching for mailto: on your web pages, bots can easily harvest your stuff.
How do you defend against email harvesters? One way is to use forms instead of email addresses. Forms can be filled out by the visitor and submitted to one or more email addresses without ever revealing the recipient addresses. Two other advantages are that one, user information can be saved to a database for later use and that two, forms work regardless of whether the user has an mail client available on the computer they happen to be using at the time.
Don’t have the resources or knowledge to implement forms? There are other strategies that can be used:
- Replace the email address text with an image of the address. This is effective but has the drawback that the user cannot simply click the image and send an email. Cut and paste doesn’t work either. Unfortunately, the user has to manually open their email editor and hand type the address.
- Another strategy is to use email address text that can be interpreted by a human but not so easily by a bot program. For example, john.sales@mycompany.com becomes john.salesATmycompany.com. This has the advantage that the user can cut and paste the address into their email client, but he or she must still edit the address by replacing the red text with “@”.
Another way spammers spam is by creating programs that automatically complete and submit web forms - forms like contact us, feedback, tell a friend, blog comments and user registrations.
So how can you defend against the form bots? The best and most widely used defense is a technology called CAPTCHA and it’s a process that’s designed to distinguish humans from computers. CAPTCHA comes in many styles - for example the “reCAPTCHA” API from the inventors of CAPTCHA technology at Carnegie Mellon University:
CAPTCHA solutions like the one above are easy to implement on most blog sites. For example, the reCAPTCHA plugin for Wordpress, developed by Ben Masters, is free and simple to install. To the contrary, implementing CAPTCHA solutions on regular websites usually involves some code twiddling and is probably best left to coder types.
There’s volumes more that can be written about spam defense, but if this post has at least heightened the awareness of site owners to the risk of exposed e-addresses on their sites, and has succeeded in providing some practical strategies for protecting against “the dark forces of spam” we’ll chafe less here at topLingo, knowing we’ve help someone somewhere avoid spam rage.
How many people are searching for iPhones versus Blackberries? IBM versus HP? Real Estate versus Jobs?
What if you could track how many people searched for your goods or services last month versus last year and the year before that? What if you could see how frequently your search topics showed up in Google News articles?
Google Trends does that. Free.
With Google Trends, you can compare up to five topics at a time and see how often they’ve been Googled over time… globally, nationally, or by state and region. It also shows you which geographic regions searched these terms the most.
Want to see the top 100 fastest-rising search queries in the U.S.? They’re updated hourly.
In topLingo fashion, here’s another “tool you can use”.
Cool. Free. Useful.
Try it!
Web agencies like topLingo - working five, ten, twenty projects at a time - need a cheap, easy, secure and online way to manage tasks and milestones. They also need a way to collaborate with internal and external team members (including clients), set varying authorization levels, and provide an accessible repository for project related files.
Basecamp from 37signals does all that.
What’s the buzz about Basecamp? It’s intuitive, affordable, highly functional, secure, web hosted and accessible. It comes with impossible to miss tutorials on screens that the user hasn’t yet added content to, putting help resources where and when they’re needed most.
Basecamp is priced on a monthly subscription basis. It’s worth checking out. Learn more.
Top Companies
Only surprise on this list is Facebook and since Microsoft just invested $240 million their numbers are still to be determined.
Source and full article: Tech Crunch
Top Social Networks & RSS Readers
MySpace is still king for now, but for how much longer. Facebook is climbing up the ranks quickly.
Source and full article: Tech Crunch
Top Social Bookmarking & RSS Readers
WOW! Google dominating del.icio.us and My Yahoo was a surprise.
Source and full article: Tech Crunch
 VideoJug.com an online video resource for expert advice and professional know-how knows their niche market.
Thier tagline appropriately reads “Life Explained. On Film.” and have taken a business model from the likes of Ask.com whose approach to competition is not to worry about the 800 pound gorillas (Google and Yahoo for Ask and YouTube for Video Jug) rather serve their niche markets to the best of their abilities.
In VJ’s case their niche is education and to date they’ve recieved more than 30 Million dollars in venture capital, staff 50+ professionals and have produced 20,000+ high definition how-to-videos such as “How to be the perfect girlfriend” or “How to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds.”
www.VideoJug.com
 The geniuses from 37 Signals who brought you Basecamp (the web-based project management miracle worker) flex thier muscles once again with “Ta-Da List” an online To Do List manager bare bones in features … just as it should be.
Less is more these days and with tasks as simple as jotting down action items there’s no reason to convolute software with massive features. Ta-Da List is simple to access, simple to add to and simple to manage items quickly and efficiently. It also produces independent RSS feeds either per list or for all lists and allows you to share lists by giving others access via email logins.
www.TaDaList.com
 Man I love Google! Not only are they buying up some very cool companies handsomely rewarding the owners, they’re hooking up the users as well by “Googlizing” the products.
For those of you using Feedburner, a new Google purchase, two critical features and reasons to pay monthly for the service are now free. MyBrand which allows you to remove the Feedburner URL and use your own, and TotalStats which gives you more analytics are now FREE! Here’s how to enable:
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/07/feedburner-give.html
 Recently beta launched Google Audio Ads allows you to create radio advertising campaigns by producing high quality radio ads and allowing you to set your own budget and decide when and where your ads air. And for a little as $400 … I can hear that!
Google Audio Ads
I have an art degree. I know hundreds of Photoshop tips and tricks. My spare time is spent video editing in Final Cut. So with that in mind guess what application I use the most? Microsoft Friggin Word!
Welcome to business 101.
If you do any client development, and do it well, the necessary evil of any web shop sales professional is to spend a massive amount of time typing client proposals and contracts. Why? Here’s a good article with reasons …
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/web_design_contracts/
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