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I’m a HUGE stumble fan. Both as a user and a marketer. As a user I get treated to new and interesting websites every day - that I would never have found without Stumbleupon. As a marketer, it never ceases to amaze me how much traffic Stumble can drive. Just when you think that a page has received all the stumble traffic it’s going to get…whoosh… another wave hits. Sometimes even a few weeks after the initial submit.I recently found that in addition to being cool for the above reasons, Stumble has a fantastic third use… cheap fast Market Research. I know, if you have ever done market research before I’m sure you’re shocked that I just used cheap and fast in the same sentence.

I came upon this discovery by accident. A client had just launched a new website and they wanted us to drive traffic to it. SEO for the long term and PPC, Social Media, online PR, in the short term.

Keep in mind, this was (is) a really snazzy site. The client (who wishes to remain anonymous), invested a huge chunk of dough into the site and it looked WAY COOL. The whole team was REALLY excited to be a part of such a cool project.

We put a lot of time into planning for the site launch and did our usual stuff, reaching out to online influencers, setting up paid search campaigns, etc. Except our tactics (which are usually pretty successful) didn’t pan out this time. We drove a moderate amount of traffic to the site but it didn’t take off like other efforts had. This was a bit of a puzzle.

Stumble helped us to figure it out. We stumbled the site and got enough Stumbleupon traffic to make the problem abundantly evident. This really cool, hugely aesthetic site was getting a number of thumbs down!!!

Looking at the site analytics for the stumble traffic we saw that these visitors were spending a lot of time on the home page (an average of 2 min 23 seconds) and had a very low bounce rate - 26%. We couldn’t discount the experience of this traffic as being low quality, these visitors were clearly engaged and interested. So why weren’t they converting? (in this case a conversion was going to a specific page and filling out a brief form).

Based on the Stumbleupon metrics, we hypothesized that although the site looked really cool, it wasn’t very user friendly. Keep in mind that Stumbleupon traffic comes to the site not knowing beforehand, what it’s all about. They arrive at the site knowing that it is related to their selected interests, and that others found the site intriguing. Period. No other cues such as where they came from, text links, keywords searched, etc.

Clearly in this case, the stumble traffic was confused. There were too few cues on the homepage as to what the site was about. To make matters worse, there was no navigation on the homepage just an enter here button. The button was below the fold so most people didn’t see it. The homepage was really interactive so they had fun playing with it initially, but in the end they got frustrated and left.

Based on our Stumbleupon hypothesis, some pretty direct Stumbleupon comments, we recommended a number of changes designed to improve the usability of the site. Grudgingly(they were afraid it would take away from the cool factor), the client moved the Enter Here button, they added an informative title, and made it a lot easier to go in and look around.
Immediately after the changes were implemented the site metrics went up (considerably).

These were all learning’s that we could have achieved through a focus group even before the site was launched. But in reality, where budget is limited and the project is usually behind schedule, who has the time or the money to do so?

Stumbleupon provided the critical feedback that the client needed. We just had to listen.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Tags: stumbleupon

Too many conferences, too little interest? Attendance and exhibitors seemed to be down at Pubcon last week in Las Vegas in comparison to the previous year and rumor had it that SES in Chicago wasn’t that heavily attended either. Both conferences fell in the same week so attendees may have been torn between which one to attend but even if all of them had attended one show, the numbers still wouldn’t have been impressive.

More and more, these conferences seem to be a place for industry insiders and wannabes to hang out and swap stories. A note to the organizers: There are millions of webmasters and site owners out there and a goodly number in both Chicago and Las Vegas. Maybe a little local city promotion might help boost those attendance numbers. I’ve seen bingo halls with more people.

Submitting to directories is a great way to build links and increase your search engine rankings. In semi-competitive industries it can produce great results. If you add article creation and social media marketing into the link building equation then you can achieve great results for any industry.

Free or paid directories?

When choosing directories going for the paid ones can be better, mainly because the links seem to last a lot longer. Many of the free directories seem to disappear or delete links after a year or so. However, there are a few free directories out there that should always be used - directories that have stood the test of time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Radio is a good medium for product advertisements, as many studies have proven. People listen to the radio for entertainment, to their favorite artist’s latest music tracks or to the current popular radio shows. The broadcast is broken up into sections, and on these interval breaks, advertisements on products and services are played.

For many years, this has been the trend in advertising. But now that the radio medium is almost behind the audio-visual medium, the television, the Internet, and other marketing strategies have to be employed to continue the benefits of advertising through audio.

Then the benefits of using music on websites were discovered. Before, music on the Internet was just available in downloadable forms as mp3. Even through hosting downloadable music on their servers, companies were able to get much traffic on their sites. And everyone engaged in Internet marketing knows that website traffic plays a big role in boosting product and service sales.

However, there had been a problem with illegal music download in which artists, musicians and record companies have lost millions of revenues.

Then, came the popularity of Internet music streaming. Unlike the former, radio streaming does not allow download of the music files. Thus, the copyrights of the artists and record label owners are protected.

So, how can this be done? There are several ways to stream audio from your site. First, is to stream a radio program from your site or blog. You can find free affiliate programs that allow you to stream their radio content from your site.

What will this mean to you? This means that your site will have new audio content every time it is visited. What’s even great is that the content is being updated even without much effort from you.

In this case, what you needed to do is to signup with an Internet radio station and have the link embedded on your blog or website.

Another way is to stream mp3s. To do this, you just need to upload your mp3files on a server and add the files’ links to the page. When the link is clicked, the browser opens a media player window and plays a file. However, since the file is in mp3 format, it may also be downloaded. Downloading music files without the authorization of the copyright owner is illegal. Therefore, if you will be using this type of streaming, make sure that you have the appropriate permit to do so.

A third way to add audio to you blog or website is to stream music through organizing playlists. Playlists are m3u files, which if downloaded, will not play music if offline. Using this process, however, can be complex. Here is a short instruction on how to do it.

1. Save your mp3 or wma file on the server. You may skip this step if you know that the file exists on another server and know the link to that file. Make sure that the link has a .mp3 or .wma extension.
2. Open your text editor and type the path to the file. Include the http:// and the file extension. Repeat this step until you have included all the links to the files that you would like to be included in the playlist.
3. Save the playlist with a .m3u extension.
4. Upload the m3u file on the directory where the music files are hosted or to your server.
5. Open your html editor and embed the link to the m3u file. Through this, you can also set if you want to have the playlist to auto play if someone visits your site of if you want your visitor to control playing the music. You can also set the volume level.

After the code is embedded on the html file, and whenever your site is visited, the songs in the playlist will be buffered, streamed and played one after another. If your playlist has several songs, the user can skip forward or go back a song in the playlist using the media player controls.

Doing this setup works for many website owners. Through this you can customize the type of music being played on your site. You can even play recordings related to your product to boost product awareness.

It requires knowledge of html to be done. But if it will help to increase traffic to your site, why not request assistance from programmers. After all, having audio on a website is a proven way to increase sales.

Author:  To View More on Heather Turnbow’s Marketing Strategies, visit: http://MommyMakingCash.com and her radio program: http://blogtalkradio.com/HeatherTurnbow

I’m a HUGE stumble fan. Both as a user and a marketer. As a user I get treated to new and interesting websites every day - that I would never have found without Stumbleupon. As a marketer, it never ceases to amaze me how much traffic Stumble can drive. Just when you think that a page has received all the stumble traffic it’s going to get…whoosh… another wave hits. Sometimes even a few weeks after the initial submit.

I recently found that in addition to being cool for the above reasons, Stumble has a fantastic third use… cheap fast Market Research. I know, if you have ever done market research before I’m sure you’re shocked that I just used cheap and fast in the same sentence.

I came upon this discovery by accident. A client had just launched a new website and they wanted us to drive traffic to it. SEO for the long term and PPC, Social Media, online PR, in the short term.

Keep in mind, this was (is) a really snazzy site. The client (who wishes to remain anonymous), invested a huge chunk of dough into the site and it looked WAY COOL. The whole team was REALLY excited to be a part of such a cool project.

We put a lot of time into planning for the site launch and did our usual stuff, reaching out to online influencers, setting up paid search campaigns, etc. Except our tactics (which are usually pretty successful) didn’t pan out this time. We drove a moderate amount of traffic to the site but it didn’t take off like other efforts had. This was a bit of a puzzle.

Stumble helped us to figure it out. We stumbled the site and got enough Stumbleupon traffic to make the problem abundantly evident. This really cool, hugely aesthetic site was getting a number of thumbs down!!!

Looking at the site analytics for the stumble traffic we saw that these visitors were spending a lot of time on the home page (an average of 2 min 23 seconds) and had a very low bounce rate - 26%. We couldn’t discount the experience of this traffic as being low quality, these visitors were clearly engaged and interested. So why weren’t they converting? (in this case a conversion was going to a specific page and filling out a brief form).

Based on the Stumbleupon metrics, we hypothesized that although the site looked really cool, it wasn’t very user friendly. Keep in mind that Stumbleupon traffic comes to the site not knowing beforehand, what it’s all about. They arrive at the site knowing that it is related to their selected interests, and that others found the site intriguing. Period. No other cues such as where they came from, text links, keywords searched, etc.

Clearly in this case, the stumble traffic was confused. There were too few cues on the homepage as to what the site was about. To make matters worse, there was no navigation on the homepage just an enter here button. The button was below the fold so most people didn’t see it. The homepage was really interactive so they had fun playing with it initially, but in the end they got frustrated and left.

Based on our Stumbleupon hypothesis, some pretty direct Stumbleupon comments, we recommended a number of changes designed to improve the usability of the site. Grudgingly(they were afraid it would take away from the cool factor), the client moved the Enter Here button, they added an informative title, and made it a lot easier to go in and look around.
Immediately after the changes were implemented the site metrics went up (considerably).

These were all learning’s that we could have achieved through a focus group even before the site was launched. But in reality, where budget is limited and the project is usually behind schedule, who has the time or the money to do so?

Stumbleupon provided the critical feedback that the client needed. We just had to listen.

Author:  Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Submitting to directories is a great way to build links and increase your search engine rankings. In semi-competitive industries it can produce great results. If you add article creation and social media marketing into the link building equation then you can achieve great results for any industry.

Free or paid directories?

When choosing directories going for the paid ones can be better, mainly because the links seem to last a lot longer. Many of the free directories seem to disappear or delete links after a year or so. However, there are a few free directories out there that should always be used - directories that have stood the test of time.

Niche or general directories?

Submitting to a combination of both niche and general directories is usually a good idea.

For most industries there are a variety of niche directories out there - the best way to find them is through a search engine. Do a search on Google, MSN or Yahoo for directories in your niche area - those that come up in the first few pages of results are usually the best ones to use.

With general directories it’s better to go for those that are more established. The older a directory is, the better.

PageRank - does it still matter?

Because directories are generally quite large, they need a certain amount of PageRank to get all of their pages indexed properly. However a high PageRank isn’t the be-all and end-all. Google’s recent crackdown on directories1 has made visible PageRank even more irrelevant when it comes to choosing directories. There are directories out there that have no PageRank whatsoever that can offer value.

If a directory is ranking well in the search engines then you can rest assured that it has enough PageRank. If you’re unsure then check how many links it has via Yahoo! Site Explorer 2 or another link popularity checker.

Anchor text

It’s always best to get the main search phrases that you are targeting in the links to your site. However this isn’t always possible and unfortunately many of the best directories won’t let you do this. Sometimes you can get around this problem by slipping in a search phrase at the end of your company name.

Before submitting have a good look around a directory and get a feel for what you can and can’t get away with. Some directory owners will let you use a search phrase on its own, whereas others are very strict and will only use your business/website name. In between you have those where you might just be able to slip a search phrase in.

Doing your homework comes in handy - if you try to use a search phrase on its own and they change it to your business/website name then it’s very unlikely you’ll be able to get them to change it to your website name with a search phrase at the end. If you’d submitted it like that in the first place you may have got away with it.

Always try to get one of your search phrases in and vary the anchor text as much as possible - this will appear more natural to the search engines.

Varying your description

Many directories will provide you with your own page about your business. If you have the same description on every page across different directory websites then many of these will be seen as duplicate content by the search engines and your links will get devalued.

To avoid this, write a unique and substantial description for every single directory (200+ characters works best). Make sure the descriptions accurately mirror your products and services and that they read well.

Deep linking

Many directories allow you to add extra links directly to internal pages of your website. You should take turns in linking to different pages of your website using different variations of the phrases you’re targeting on each page. Using the same anchor text to link to the same page over and over again will appear unnatural to the search engines and this could work against you.

How many directories should you submit to?

There’s no fixed number of directories that you should get listed in. Work out a 12 month directory submission budget for each site and then do so many each week or month for the full duration.

When you’re building links to your site via directories or any other method, you should do it over time. Submitting to 100 directories in a week and then forgetting about it won’t be as effective as spreading the 100 directory submissions over a 3 month period.

The top 10 directories

Finally, here’s a list of the top free and paid general directories to get you started.
5 of the best free directories include:

• Open Directory Project
• World Site Index
• Domaining.in
• Web World
• Search Sight

5 of the best paid directories include:

• Yahoo! Directory
• Best of the Web
• Business.com
• Aviva
• Ezilon

Author:  David Eaves has been working in the search engine optimisation13 industry for the last 5 years. More of his articles can be found at his SEO blog.