SEO Software

Sam Palmissano has transformed IBM over the past decade or so that he’s been in top positions in the company. IBM isn’t just a mainframe hardware company any more—it’s involved in a wide range of businesses, throughout the world, and unlike many tech companies is still growing—and some of the best SEOs in the world [...]

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To celebrate Christmas, I was going through and watching the 100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists.

When I got to A Passion for Discovery, I was pissed that they didn’t want me to be able to download it. So I used my web developer toolbar to “Disable all Styles” and then “Display object Information”. From there I was able to see that the lecture was being served from the CERN Document Server and a quick search later I found the lecture in a format that I could download.

Why did I want to download it? So I could use the VlC player’s option of ‘Playback -> Faster’ to watch the video 50% faster than normal speed.

At the 9:00 mark Peter Freund put up a slide of Einstein and other scientists appearing on actual currency. So here’s two of the things I love most coming together: science and money. Immediately I paused the video and searched for “Isaac Newton British Pound.”

That lead me to this fantastic website showing a collection of Banknotes featuring Scientists and Mathematicians. This guy has collected more than 50 images of banknotes featuring the likes of Einstein, Newton, Schrödinger, Euler, Galileo . . . etc. at 600 DPI!

The first thing I thought of was “How freaking cool (in a geeky way) would it be to have a poster with all these Bank Notes on it?” It would be easy to put these images together on a huge tiff file and then have it printed. But how much would printing cost?

My first few searches led to pretty high prices. But then I found a printer that will print 1000 24″X36″ posters for $871.50 – just 87 cents per poster (I was gonna sign up for their affiliate program but just can’t be bothered).

If I weren’t already making bank, and I didn’t mind dealing with fulfillment, I would totally buy 1000 of those posters and set up a site to sell them for $7.99 + $4.95 S&H. Then I would get a post on sites like geekdad to promote the posters, hit up the social media circuit with a video of me getting and opening the posters, and maybe even do some PPC or CPM advertising on science and math sites.

If you sell 125, you break even. If you sell all 1000, you make about $10k profit.

I can’t stand it when people whine about not knowing what to do; there are so many things to do to make money that I can’t be bothered to stop and do even 1% of them (like skipping the affiliate link above). If you can’t figure out a way to make money online, it’s because you’re just not trying.

By the way, if you DO make the poster I talked about above, let me know: I’ll be your first customer.

Malcom Gladwell is an incredible writer. His prose are so simple to read. Gladwell does a great job of walking his reader down a psudo-scientific path to reach a predestined conclusion.

The problem is that his theories are mostly just feel good bullshit that do not stand up to experimental scrutiny. Intuititively, I sensed this when reading his book. But here we have someone who’s actually done some experimental research to blow the whole “connectors” crap out of the water:

Watts set the test in motion by randomly picking one person as a trendsetter, then sat back to see if the trend would spread. He did so thousands of times in a row.

The results were deeply counterintuitive. The experiment did produce several hundred societywide infections. But in the large majority of cases, the cascade began with an average Joe (although in cases where an Influential touched off the trend, it spread much further). To stack the deck in favor of Influentials, Watts changed the simulation, making them 10 times more connected. Now they could infect 40 times more people than the average citizen (and again, when they kicked off a cascade, it was substantially larger). But the rank-and-file citizen was still far more likely to start a contagion.

Why didn’t the Influentials wield more power? With 40 times the reach of a normal person, why couldn’t they kick-start a trend every time? Watts believes this is because a trend’s success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend–not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded. And in fact, when Watts tweaked his model to increase everyone’s odds of being infected, the number of trends skyrocketed.

“If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one–and if it isn’t, then almost no one can,” Watts concludes. To succeed with a new product, it’s less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public’s mood. Sure, there’ll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts’s terminology, an “accidental Influential.”

This is important for you to understand for viral marketing. Sure, it helps to have your viral picked up by highly visible personas or sites. But it’s far more important to create a meme that wants to go viral.

So for viral campaigns it would seem that it will be much more productive to attempt to emulate the viral characteristics of the content of a meme than it would be to try to emulate the propagation method. IE: spend less time trying to get the perfect Digg submitter and more time making it so that people really want to Digg your shit.

That’s not to say you can’t push your boarderline story over the top with the help of an aggressive social media network: you can. But at least for social media and viral ROI, you’re better off focusing the bulk of your efforts on the meme.

Merry Christmas everyone! This week at the Search Engine Roundtable was a fairly slow week, due to the holidays. Some of the news I wanted to cover includes that Googlers are working on Christmas. Also, I posted the Christmas logos...

Merry Christmas! Although I have about five items to write about today, I figured I hold off on them until Monday. Trust me, I know how it is to be swamped and buried in feeds and news to catch up...

Let's face it, 2009 was a pretty awful year. And not just the world of advertising. But there are signs of hope as we head toward 2010. ...

You have to have some kind of super-powers to keep up with all of the issues posted in our Webmaster Help Forum—that's why we call our Top Contributors the "Bionic Posters." They're able to leap through tall questions in a single bound, providing helpful and solid information all around. We're thankful to the Bionics for tackling problems both hard and easy (well, easy if you know how). Our current Bionic Posters are: Webado (Christina), Phil Payne, Red Cardinal (Richard), Shades1 (Louis), Autocrat, Tim Abracadabra, Aaron, Cristina, Robbo, John, Becky Sharpe, Sasch, BbDeath, Beussery (Brian), Chibcha (Terry), Luzie (Herbert), 奥宁 (Andy), Ashley, Kaleh and Redleg!

With thousands of webmasters visiting the English Help Forum every day, some questions naturally pop up more often than others. To help catch these common issues, the Bionic Posters have also helped to create and maintain a comprehensive list of frequently asked questions and their answers. These FAQs cover everything from "Why isn't my site indexed?" to diagnosing difficult issues with the help of Google Webmaster Tools, often referring to our Webmaster Help Center for specific topics. Before you post in the forum, make sure you've read through these resources and do a quick search in the forum; chances are high that your question has been answered there already.

Besides the Bionic Posters, we're lucky to have a number of very active and helpful users in the forum, such as: squibble, Lysis, yasir, Steven Lockey, seo101, RickyD, MartinJ and many more. Thank you all for making this community so captivating and—most of the time—friendly.

Here are just a few (well, a little more than a few) of the many comments that we've seen posted in the forum:

• "Thank you for this forum... Thank you to those that take the time to answer and care!"
• "I've only posted one question here, but have received a wealth of knowledge by reading tons of posts and answers. The time you experts put into helping people with their problems is very inspiring and my hat's off to each of you. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that your services aren't going unnoticed and I truly appreciate the lessons."
• "Thank you very much cristina, what you told me has done the trick. I really appriciate the help as this has been bugging me for a while now and I didn't know what was wrong."
• "thank you ssssssssssoooo much kaleh. "
• "OK, Phil Payne big thanks to You! I have made changes and maybe people are starting to find me in G! Thanks to Ashley, I've started to make exclusive and relevant content for people."
• "If anything, it has helped me reflect on the sites and projects of days gone by so as to see what I could have done better - so that I can deliver that much more and better results going forward. I've learned that some things I had done right, were spot on, and other issues could have been handled differently, as well as a host of technical information that I've stored away for future use. Bottom Line: this forum rocks and is incredibly helpful."
• "I asked a handful of questions, got GREAT help while doing a whole lot of lurking, and now I've got a site that rocks!! (...) Huge thanks to all the Top Contributors, and a very special mention to WEBADO, who helped me a TON with my .htaccess file."
• "Over the years of reading (and sometimes contributing) to this forum I think it has helped to remove many false assumptions and doubts over Google's ranking systems. Contrary to what many have said I verily believe Google can benefit small businesses. Keep up the good work. "
• "The forum members are awesome and are a most impressive bunch. Their contribution is immeasurable as it is huge. Not only have they helped Google in their success as a profitable business entity, but also helped webmasters both aspiring and experienced. There is also an engender(ment) of "family" or "belonging" in the group that has transcended the best and worst of times (Current forum change still TBD :-) ). We can agree, disagree and agree to disagree but remain respectful and civil (Usually :-) )."
• "Hi Redleg, Thank you very much for all of the information. Without your help, I don't think I would ever have known how to find the problem. "
• "What an amazing board. Over the last few days I have asked 1 question and recieved a ton of advice mainly from Autocrat. "
• "A big thank you to the forum and the contributors that helped me get my site on Google . After some hassle with my web hosters and their naff submission service, issues over adding pages Google can see, issues over Sitemaps, I can now say that when I put my site name into the search and when i put in [custom made watch box], for instance, my site now comes up."
• "Thank you Autocrat! You are MAGNIFICENT! (...) I am your biggest fan today. : ) Imagine Joe Cocker singing With a Little Help from My Friends...that's my theme song today."
• "I've done a lot of reading since then and I've learned more in the last year than I learned in the previous 10. When I stumbled into this forum I had no idea what I was getting into but finding this forum was a gift from God! Words cannot express the amount of gratitude I feel for the help you have given me and I wish I could repay you some how.... I don't mean to sound so mushy, but I write this with tears in my eyes and I am truly, truly grateful..."

Are you new to the Webmaster Help Forum? Tell us a little bit about yourself and then join us to learn more and help others!

Posted by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zürich

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

'Twas the day before Christmas and white hat SEOs Were excited for presents with ribbons and bows! They had been nice, and Santa knew well They were deserving of gifts and jingling bells! At the Bruce Clay, Inc. holiday party they came, Bringing good kin along for the games! And who but Santa Clay did appear With a bag full of fun and love for the New Year! I just wanted to add one final dash of holiday cheer to the blog before leaving for the long holiday weekend. Here's a quick handful of fun holiday finds... Read more of Happy Holidays 2009.

Happy Holidays 2009 was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

Do you ever read reviews of companies you do business with? Do you read product reviews before buying a new camera, vacuum cleaner, or computer? If so, you are not alone! According to Lynn Terry on Clicknewz.com, 90% of consumers use reviews at least some of the time when planning purchases. That being said, as [...]

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According to November comScore data (published by TechCrunch) Google News is the second largest online news property in the world in terms of traffic. Yahoo ranks as the top global news site. Here’s the partial comScore list: Yahoo News Google News New York Times sites CNN China’s QQ.com BBC MSN In the US Yahoo still ranks as number one but Google News reportedly [...]

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As many of you know, Google started their holiday logo blitz earlier this week. Google has now posted four of (I believe) five logos they have for the holidays. We also have logos from Yahoo, Bing, Ask, DogPile, Baidu and many other search engines and search industry web sites. I wanted to [...]

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In a Security and Exchange document filed on Tuesday night, AOL plans on cutting about one-third of their staff, about 2,300 people. The filing said, “the Restructuring will include the reduction of approximately a third of the Company’s current employee base, which will be conducted on a voluntary and involuntary basis.” AOL became an independent [...]

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I can’t be the only one.

I can’t be the only one who’s biggest hump to get over for the cardio portion of my workouts is pure boredom.

For me, running is boring. The elliptical machine is boring. Rollerblading, bike, Stairmaster: boring, Boring, BORING!

But cardio has to be done if you don’t want to be a fat, out of shape blob. So what can we do to make these workouts less boring? Here’s what I do:

Audiobooks, TTC, other lectures and podcasts can all be a great source of knowledge. So why not listen to these while you’re doing cardio?

I’ll tell you why not:
A. They generally talk too damn slow to hold your interest and
B. Without some high energy music beats, it’s hard to keep your pace when doing cardio.

Solution

You take your teaching company lectures, podcasts, audiobooks, auio read magazines, or open course mp3s and open them in Audacity.

Go to Effects ->Change Tempo:

Increase the tempo. I generally find 50-75% to be ideal. If it’s more technical or the people are speaking quickly, then increase the tempo less.

Increasing the tempo makes the speaker talk quicker, while maintaining the pitch. This is important if you don’t want to feel like you are listening to Mickey Mouse on Crack. Note: there’s something about the British accent that makes it much more difficult to understand when sped up.

Next step: open up your high-energy work out music (uncut is easier to work with). It’s also a good idea to eliminate or keep vocals to a minimum. Another cool thing about tempo shift is you can increase the BPM of your tunes to make them better geared toward work outs.

Now listen to a sample of how these two sound when played together. Generally the Podcast, Audiobook, or Course portion of the combined audio will need to have it’s volume increase (+db).

Once you are satisfied of the balance, highlight the entire portion where both exist.

Go to File -> Export Selection as an MP3.

Rinse and repeat.

Now load up the completed track to your mp3 player and get to the gym!

There is this old and upsetting thread in the Bing Forums about how Bing handles the canonical tag. The thread is filled with misinformation. Matt McGee's post at Search Engine Land a week ago says it clearly. Bing says it's...

As a continuation of Brett Tabke calling out Google for stiffing webmasters over the Christmas gift this year, Brett explains more of why he is a bit upset with Google in 2009. Brett lays out what he believes Google is...

A search for [dreadlocks] sports one of those Google definitions links at the top right of the page that leads to an 'offensive' categorization of those who have dreadlocks as their hairstyle. The Google Definition of dreadlocks uses it in...

Semantic Checker is a new and still experimental Firefox addon (download it here) highlighting semantic elements in the web page you are currently viewing.

The tool should be used for on-page analysis as well for educational purposes (to see which sites are introducing new HTML elements and microformats, for example).

Here are the elements the tool supports:

Semantic HTML4 elements

• Shortened words: <abbr> and <acronym> (by the way, if you are wondering about the difference, find it here);
• Headings: h1-h6;
• Quoting: blockquote, cite (more info can be found here)
• Lists: dl, dir, menu (more information here, the latter two are deprecated)
• Emphasis tags: <em>,<strong>
• More elements: code, dfn, address, legend, samp

Semantic HTML5 elements

For all those interested, here’s a cool list of HTML5 tags. The tool supports the following ones:

• Sections: article, aside, header, footer, nav;
• Content, media, data etc tags : figure, mark, meter, audio, video, progress, time, command, datagrid, details, datalist, keygen, bb, outpu, ruby
• Input-attributes: datetime, datetime-local, date, month, week, time, number, range, email, url, search, color

Microformats

• hCard, hCalendar
• rel-license, rel-nofollow, rel-tag
• Vote Links

Now let’s try to use the tool at a number of popular web pages.

Twitter Profile:

Facebook Group Page

Stumbleupon Favorites Page:

My verdict:

I liked the tool for the following of reasons:

• It’s a great way to track new HTML elements and microformats being implemented;
• The tool can also be used for on-page diagnostics (to analyze headers, nofollow attribute, etc);
• The addon is quite invisible: it won’t bug you until you click it.

Note: huge thanks to Webnauts for sharing the tool with me.

The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Analyze HTML Elements & Microformats w/ Semantic Checker

There have appeared a few really cool interactive buttons recently that visualize how popular the story is. The best thing about them is that they really encourage the visitor to share and promote the page and therefore I highly recommend you to install a few of them.

The question is which one …Tweetmeme seems to be the most popular one recently, though I see blogs invite readers to also share on Facebook, Digg, etc.

So my question is, which one worked the best for you in terms of traffic and overall response? (of course I realize this also largely depends on the niche and blog type, so I am not setting up a poll and asking you to share your experience in the comments instead).

Here are the 4 more or less general ones (those that seem to work for any niche / blog):

1. Tweetmeme

Tweetmeme button

Code:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

Additional features:

• Use the custom URL shortener;
• Use the compact form;
• Change the RT @ username.

Note: use WordPress Plugin for blogs.

2. Email this

Mail counter

Code:

<iframe src="http://getmailcounter.com/mailcounter/?url=http://yoururlhere.com&title=title of your page here" height="64" width="50" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Preview:

Note 1: The message will have "Powered by TheNextWeb.com" link inside.

Note 2: The counter changes once you hit it. So the number it shows does not equals to the number the link was actually emailed.But nevertheless it looks really encouraging to share the page, so I am including it here.

3. Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook button

Code:

<a name="fb_share" type="box_count" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>

Preview:

Share

 

Additional features:

• Customize the button and counter form;
• Set the custom URL to share.

4. Delicious

Delicious Tagometer Badge:

Code:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
if (typeof window.Delicious == “undefined”) window.Delicious = {};
Delicious.BLOGBADGE_DEFAULT_CLASS = ‘delicious-blogbadge-tall’
Delicious.BLOGBADGE_GRAPH_SHOW = false
Delicious.BLOGBADGE_TAGS_SHOW = false
</script>
<script src=”http://static.delicious.com/js/d2-blogbadge.js”></script>

Preview:

if (typeof window.Delicious == "undefined") window.Delicious = {}; Delicious.BLOGBADGE_DEFAULT_CLASS = 'delicious-blogbadge-tall' Delicious.BLOGBADGE_GRAPH_SHOW = false Delicious.BLOGBADGE_TAGS_SHOW = false

Additional features:

• Can be wide or tall;
• Show times saved; activity graph and tags.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Interactive Buttons with Hit Counters – Which Ones Do You Use?

Merry Christmas Search Engine Roundtable readers! I believe most of the search engines have their special logos or themes live today. They include a handful of logos from Google, an animated logo from Yahoo, an awesome picture from Bing, a...