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If your site allows visitors to post digital files or comments (e.g. in an online blog, as well as in a forum or chat room), you could be held liable for copyright infringement if any of their postings infringe the rights of another person, even if you are unaware of the infringement. Under general copyright principles, you would be strictly liable for their copyright infringement, even if you are “innocent”.

You could also be liable for defamatory statements posted by bloggers.

The Playboy Case And Copyright Infringement

A good example of an “innocent infringer’s” liability that occurred before the enactment of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is the case of Playboy Enter., Inc. v. Frena, 839 F. Supp. 1552 (M.D. Fla. 1993). In this case, Playboy alleged that the defendants who operated a bulletin board service (BBS) were liable for copyright infringement. Subscribers to the defendants’ BBS had illegally taken copyrighted photos owned by Playboy and uploaded them onto the defendants’ BBS.

The court found the defendants liable for copyright infringement, despite the fact that the defendants did not upload the photos (the subscribers uploaded them), and the defendants were unaware of the presence of the infringing photos until the lawsuit was filed.

The court stated: “…intent or knowledge is not an element of infringement, and thus even an innocent infringer is liable for infringement …”.

The DMCA, enacted in 1998, provided a “safe harbor” so that this harsh result can be avoided, but service providers must take affirmative steps to qualify for it… or else you will suffer the same harsh fate as Frena.

To qualify for the DMCA “safe harbor” from strict copyright liability, you are required:

* to post a specific notice on your site (Terms of Use); and

* to file the DMCA Registration Form with the US Copyright Office.

Liability For Defamatory Statements

In addition to liability for the copyright infringement of bloggers, another pitfall to avoid if you permit visitors to post to your site is liability for their defamatory comments about another person, a competitor, or another product.

Defamation is an intentional false communication, made either orally or in writing, published to a third party, which injures another person or company’s good name or reputation.

While it is clear you will be liable for defamatory statements posted by you or your employees on your site, what about defamatory statements posted by bloggers? Will you be liable?

Statements which consist of pure opinion are not actionable… however, merely stating that a statement is pure opinion does not make it so. For example, a law school professor was awarded $3 million in damages arising out of defamatory statements published on a student’s site.

Online defamation may occur in the context of product reviews where strong statements are posted such as “do not buy this product because it will not perform as advertised”.

In addition, actionable defamation may occur where a site publishes untrue promotional statements about a person or company. For example, in one recent case, the Wall Street Journal was sued by the Harrods department store for publishing the statement that Harrods was the “Enron of Britain”.

Congress came to the rescue of “interactive computer services” in 1996 with subsection (c) of the Communications Decency Act which provides: “No provider or user of any interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 USCA Sec. 230(c)(referred to below as “Section 230″).

Section 230 was intended to overrule prior case law which routinely held that online providers were liable as publishers and speakers for third party content. Now, under Section 230, absent an affirmative showing by a plaintiff that an online service provider is the author of a defamatory message, email, or post, the provider should almost always avoid liability for defamation. In other words, if you or your employees are the authors of defamatory statements, you’ll still be liable, but if your website visitors are the authors of defamatory material, you won’t be liable.

A word of warning about another pitfall — be careful in assuming an obligation to monitor messages, email, or posts contributed by your site visitors or in exercising editorial control over them. If you assume an obligation to monitor, or if you maintain editorial control, and if you fail to screen out defamatory statements, you may be liable, despite the protections of Section 230.

For this reason, your Terms of Use should clearly state the extent to which you exercise editorial control, if at all, over messages, email, or posts of site visitors. And it’s always best to reserve the right to monitor postings, but not the obligation to monitor.

Conclusion In summary, if you have a blog, take the steps discussed above that are required to qualify for the DMCA “safe harbor” from copyright infringement. Ensure that that your employees do not post defamatory statements on your blog, and affirmatively disclaim any obligation to monitor posts by bloggers.

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Chip Cooper is a leading intellectual property, software, and Internet attorney who advises software and ecommerce businesses nationwide. Chip’s easy and affordable online contract drafting service coordinates website contracts such as Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Subscription, Membership, and SaaS agreements. Visit Chip’s http://digicontracts.com site and download his FREE report, “12 Sure-Fire Ways Your Website Can Get You Sued”.

Tags: blogs

As technologies converge to more adequately serve their respective audience, it is no surprise that bundling services to facilitate customer loyalty is a common tactic for increasing brand loyalty. Some things just work better together such as SEO and website usability.

It is only a matter of time before search engine optimization evolves and starts to bundle on-page usability services for businesses to complement the off-page optimization process seamlessly. Getting traffic to your site is important, however making sure they easily grasp and engage your content is even more important.

Search Engine Optimization can benefit from implementing facets borrowed from web usability analysis such as identifying the mental model of the target audience. Similarly in SEO the focus is on keywords, whereas the focus should equally implement removing unnecessary steps that preclude users from reaching an optimal degree of satisfaction.

Until now, the process of SEO was rather one-dimensional in regard to embracing the prospect behind the search as the focus was contingent on keywords or key phrases instead of the user experience. Usability is the natural evolution of on-page search engine optimization and the science of user interaction.

The New SEO Model Places Equal Emphasis on User Retention

The new proposed holistic model of SEO and usability is all-encompassing and includes tactics for optimizing every facet of conversion process starting with the method a potential prospect may use to find the target site. Engagement metrics such as what they do when they get there (task analysis) and how satisfied they where when they depart inevitably impact the impression of your brand to the prospect and how likely it is to appeal to others from that genre.

This is the next logical step for online marketing services as advertising and branding are not as clear-cut and obvious online. Using analytics to capture search data, such as younger generations use search engines 50% more to find content than older demographic profiles, who have a higher propensity for using links by contrast to find content online.

Applying the information gathered from statistics on search behavior could preemptively impact how you choose to market your services to each respective audience. For example, if your target audience is 45-55 years old, then focusing on more contextual content (like reviews, press releases or news sources) and using links to promote your website could increase conversion and click through rates dynamically, instead of using PPC (Pay Per Click Advertising) and expecting that group of consumers to find or click your advertisements in search engines.

In essence, catering to the natural tendency of the prospect is the key to unlocking your sites hidden potential and funneling droves of traffic to your pages. By leveraging the continuity of their expectations known as population stereotypes (what prospects expect to see) and your ability to deliver solutions. You can position your value-proposition tactfully and naturally capture a larger percentage of a market segment. Not through random assumptions, but rather through factual data gathered from analytics, usability studies and statistics.

The Expansion of the Definition of Design

To reference the topic of design, components such as font selection, color choice and how intuitive your site navigation is structured inevitably impacts the emotional state of the reader. A site that is designed for a teenage user may not go over will with the 35 and up demographic, nor would large 16 point fonts and colors with high saturation appeal to the 20’s crowd (since it lacks aesthetic appeal).

This is the value of usability, knowing what, why and how to reach your audience by studying their habits, interests and known limitations. Adding an 8pt font on an elderly site which has users ranging from 60 years old and up would not facilitate a high degree of user engagement, but on the contrary discourage it. Ironically, many companies either through oversight or ignorance create inherent visual or functional roadblocks that inhibit users from experiencing their content due to disparity or cognitive incongruence.

Just because analytics and research can identify patterns, trends or behavior modifications in a target group, does not mean that the scope of analysis alone is enough for your business to capitalize on it. With content and links patched together with rag-tag code and orphaned pages from poor navigation, sometimes starting fresh with a new site is the best solution.

The Benefits Website Redesign

This is where SEO comes in handy. Working from the data gleaned during analysis, a search engine optimization specialist can then implement themed site architecture, links and organic positioning strategies that when combined with usability task flow analysis create the perfect one-two knockout punch for increasing user engagement.

The objective of search engine optimization is to create the highest degree of thematic relevance to include your content in the top 10 results. The objective of usability is to allow users to execute tasks with the least amount of resistance. Optimization as a whole is realized through this synergy. However, what value does SEO have if your pages violate every known axiom that is conducive to a pleasant user experience?

In order to fully appreciate the range of human emotions and how they pertain to usability and click behavior, concepts such as the VIMM Model (Visual, Intellectual, Memory and Motor) requirements that determine visitor interaction must be taken into consideration.

Does your Design Send Users Packing?

If you introduce a radial button or drop down menu vs. a text field for capturing data, which forces you to enter a value from the keyboard. Then the time you take to remove your hand from the mouse and enter a value affects the overall user experience.

Multiply the effect across each facet of user based input and interaction required and contribute to creating user anxiety which can escalate a higher bounce rate from your pages. This is one minuscule example of usability and application and shows how introducing a simple motor function (such as scrolling) can hinder efficiency when it comes to using your prime website real estate.

Optimized usability sites are those that are self-evident (visually and intellectually) and do not require you to rely on memory (where is that button again), fine motor skills (clicking a 5 pixel target area) or having to perform a mental calculus operation to perform a simple task. Usability is about simplicity, much like optimization is about keeping only the essentials to streamline the theme of your content, links and code.

Keep Only What is Required to Fulfill the Needs of the User

I am not implying a stark minimalist website with one button, but moderation and function should be intimately connected. As a consequence of usability, user engagement can provide statistics based on trial, error and research to provide a basis for modifications to site architecture, navigation, the number of options presented or the structure of your content to satisfy the needs of the target audience.

The implication of design now supersedes previous facets primarily limited to navigation, images and graphic design. Now the term design implies the structure of the information such as the content, the semantic relationships between site architecture and the content, the information silos used to cluster the data to create relevance. Other factors such as contextual relevance determine if such taxonomy allows others to collectively grasp the information to endorse, interact or support it.

This convergence of search engine optimization, usability and analytics offer a distinct advantage over existing companies still employing a shot in the dark mentality when it comes to marketing.

Those who fail to integrate vital user information into a coherent plan of action only facilitate the void that separate the industry leaders from the clueless followers doomed to mimic their past out of the old if it isn’t broken don’t fix it school of thought.

Since it really boils down to objectivity, if a business is content with 1,000 visitors per month while their competition enjoys 100,000 then surely nothing is broken aside from the ambition of the management.

To say that there is always room for improvement is the starting point, but actually having the nerve to move beyond your comfort zone, or the comfort zone of your brand is another. AT&T for example, who we knew as the true blue traditional marketing targeted at adults (in the pre-cell phone era) has now integrated a new look and feel by adding a splash of orange to appeal to a youthful market (just look at the recent successful launch of the bundled ATT voice and data packages with the Apple IPhone).

Engage Your Audience or They Will Find a New Brand that Will

The point being, customers now have the power to embrace your business or ignore it like yesterdays news. Don’t believe it, ask the yellow pages who is still trying to recover as a result of brand stasis.

Moving forward denotes evolution, making intelligent choices that denote logical and emotional stability while creating content worthy of interaction. Such is the business model of the new millennium. This approach transcends colors, fonts, keywords or a call to action, but rather it incorporates a balance of all of the right elements to support a rich user experience.

This is one of many posts to follow over the next few weeks about the topic of SEO and usability and how they both complement branding and exposure. I recently completed The Science and Art of Effective Web and Application Design from Human Factors International.

I must admit, the quantity and quality of the information was astounding. Anyone truly interested in learning more about this topic should visit their site and inquire. If and when a course is available, I highly encourage you to take part in their exclusive and in-depth grasp of usability as a whole and their ability to share it so succinctly with others.

Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

Tags: Bundling Search Engine Marketing and Usability Testing, Mental Map Usability, Website Usability & User Engagement Metrics

Article writing and article marketing today are very effective means of getting traffic to your website. I look at articles that I have written over a year ago and still see traffic being sent to my website from these articles. The key is to write an article that is high enough quality so that web masters want to publish your articles on their web sites, and for your readers to have enough interest to go to your web site after reading your article. This article goes over the features your article should have that will achieve these results.

1. Your Article Should Provide A Solution Or Answer A Common Question

Your article should provide a solution to a common question or a problem that your target audience has. You can easily research questions that your target audience has by going to places such as yahoo groups or yahoo answers to see what people are discussing and wanting help with. Another great place is to find great topics is to search for niche forums within your target market and see what questions people are asking in these forums. This exercise will give you a goldmine of very relevant data that you can use as subject material for your articles that will be valuable to your readers.

2. Your Article Should Leave The Reader Wanting More

Your article should be useful and provide valuable content, but let’s face it, you can only do so much in an article, even if it’s 750 words or so. You should write your article so that the reader feels like they have received some value, however your article has now generated greater interest, and they would like to know more. I have found that using lists such as (”The Top 5 Things People Can Do To Relieve Stress”) and then make it clear to the reader that there are 5 additional things they can do that are also just as effective as the things listed in your article, is a good way to create further interest in the subject.

3. Your Article Should Give The Reader A Strong Call To Action

Your article should end by giving the reader a strong call to action. This is telling the reader where they should go to get more information (the rest of the stress reduction tips). Creating a strong call to action in the conclusion and stating it strongly in the resource box is a powerful way to create your call to action. Remember, your article is not a sales letter, so the call to action is really the only place that you have to get the reader to go to your website, sign up for your mailing list, call you on the phone, or anything else you want them to do.

If you are going to set up your call to action in the conclusion, then you should make sure you recap the article, and then just add a sentence or two that brings up a question or similar thought that would cause the reader to want more information. Most English teachers are probably rolling over in their graves right now, but you are writing your article to get more traffic to your website, not to win an essay competition.

A quality article will be published by others more often as well as demonstrate to your readers that you know what your talking about, so they would feel comfortable finding out more about what you would have to say on your particular topic. It is relatively easy to find topics that will be of interest to your target market, as well as structuring your call to action so your article drives visitors to your website in larger numbers. These tips combined with other tips such as how to structure your resource box and how to use keywords in your articles increases your traffic to greater levels. These are things that you need to keep in mind when writing your articles to make them even more effective in driving traffic to your website.

Discover more tips that will teach you how to write powerful articles that will drive qualified traffic to your website. Go to an article directory and access the goldmine of information on how to write quality and effective articles.
Article Resource Directory.

Tags: article writing

Driving traffic to your site is one of the first requirements to a successful online business. Without traffic, your site may as well not exist. There are numerous ways you can drive traffic, so let’s take a look at some of them and evaluate them. Keep in mind, this isn’t a comprehensive list, but it is some of the more successful ways. . I invite you to share any other ideas that have worked for you.

• PPC
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Affiliate Programs
• Article Syndication
• Press Releases
• Blogging Banner ads
• Joint ventures
• Offline campaigns (that drive traffic to your site)
• Advertising (on other sites, ad networks and industry publications)

Let’s look at the pros and cons of a few of the methods, to help you determine what methods are viable for your business. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3, as we work our way through the list above and determine the pros and cons.

PPC

Pros:

You can drive traffic quickly — that’s a good thing!

Your traffic is targeted if you select the right keywords — also a good thing!

You can use PPC to test things (headlines, landing page copy) — great way to use PPC, in addition to just driving traffic for sales. Be willing to sacrifice some profits and use PPC to test ideas before you fully role them out.

You control the settings and can turn it on and off any time — control is good.

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Tags: Website Traffic

The Internet is changing and the changes are happening quickly. Luckily, the changes are in the favor of entrepreneurs, small businesses, authors, and small presses. Welcome to Web 2.0 and social media.

Learning about and utilizing these new tools and technologies is essential to establish a dynamic and truly connected Web presence. The beauty of Web 2.0 is that it is driven by the people who use it. Unlike today’s Internet, Web 2.0 relies more on a site’s popularity among the masses. Incorporating social media optimization alongside search engine optimization enables anyone to establish a truly optimized Web presence—especially if paired with a meaningful message.

The tools available to achieve this optimization are numerous but can seem overwhelming. However, once armed with a general knowledge, it is easy to select the tools and technologies to catalyze the greatest amount of Web traffic.

According to Wikipedia, Web 2.0 “refers to a perceived second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services—such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies—which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.” Additionally, Wikipedia defines social media as “the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. Social media sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact.” Thus, Web 2.0 and social media optimization means optimizing one’s Web presence in three general ways: Interactivity, Sharing, and Collaboration.

Interactivity

The essential premise of social media is that information (media) offered to users will be interactive. Social, in a word, means interactive and interactivity can be accomplished in many ways, whether it is allowing readers to comment on or share content, subscribe to it so they can have it on hand, or display the content on their own site.

To make online content more interactive, Web 2.0 and social media users can implement these tools and technologies:

• Blogging, using WordPress or Typepad
• RSS Feeds (see Feedburner for more information on RSS feeds)
• Podcasting and Vidcasting
• Wikis
• Social Media News (Press) Releases
• Social Media Newsrooms
• Image tools such as Snapshots

Sharing

Sharing in the “live” Web means that content is offered to others through blogging indexes and media communities; by tagging interesting sites on social bookmarking sites; or by developing mini applications like widgets or mash-ups.

Remember: Anything that can be posted to a Web site will have some type of “media community” in which to share it.

To begin “sharing” content in the live Web, Internet users can:

• Include their Blog, Podcast, or Vidcast in directories like Technorati, Google Blog Search, Podcast.com, or BlogPulse
• Tag their favorite blogs and Web sites on social bookmarking sites like Technorati and del.icio.us
• Share and tag multimedia in Media Communities like Flickr and YouTube
• Use Collage tools or Webcasting like SplashCast Media or blogTV
• Create and distribute Widgets or Mash-ups using services like widgetbox, Open Social, or Yahoo Pipes.

Collaboration

Web 2.0 and social media users need to be willing to give back. This could mean commenting regularly on others’ content, joining and contributing to a social networking site, contributing to crowd-sourced news sites, or becoming an avatar in a virtual reality.

Specifically, some of these efforts may include:

• Commenting on others’ blogs (using co.mments is a good way to track them)
• Contributing to crowd-sourced news aggregators like reddit, Digg, or Fark
• Creating profiles on social or professional networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, or Facebook
• Participating in microblogs like Twitter or Jaiku
• Posting events in social calendars such as eventful.com, or upcoming.org
• Becoming an avatar in a virtual world like Second Life or There
• Participating in communities or forums like a Yahoo group, a Google group, or starting your own using services like Ning.

Participating in the new, live Web is ultimately about connecting with people. A common mistake businesses make is to apply old methods to these new tools. It has been disastrous for many of them. With a real and conversational message and general understanding of the new social media tools and technologies, anyone can participate in the new Internet and find tremendous benefit from their efforts!

Deltina Hay is the principle of the companies DaltonPublishing.com and SocialMediaPower.com. She has worked in programming and Web development for 25 years. Ms. Hay’s graduate education includes computer science, applied mathematics, and psychology.

Tags: social media, Web 2.0

Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring – Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a whole?

What’s Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now, Microsoft put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo! search engine in early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at first, saying that it undervalued its company as one of the top engines (and a provider of other services, including email and chat as well). Microsoft did not increase the offer at this point; it instead decided to enter a proxy battle.

A proxy battle would involve Microsoft putting up its own board of directors to let shareholders decide if its purchase of the Yahoo! search engine would be acceptable or not. In essence, Microsoft has decided that it will attempt to convince shareholders that their interests are better served by people who will approve this acquisition between two of the top Internet search engines. And Yahoo! shareholders have been beaten down for some time, so it is widely expected that the majority will in fact favor this acquisition.

Meanwhile, Yahoo!, on spurning this offer, began talking with other companies in order to build strategic partnerships and keep itself as one of the top engines, as it had been for so long. It was rumored that MySpace’s parent company, News Corporation, was in talks to work with the Yahoo! search engine, as was Google. However, these talks seem to have fizzled, and Yahoo!’s board of directors has begun speaking directly with Microsoft’s board. Yahoo! bought a bit of time by delaying the election of its board, but it is believed that this is all the shareholders will stand for at this point.

So I’m assuming that if the acquisition goes down, the Microsoft search engine and the Yahoo! search engine will likely be using the same algorithm, even if they remain separate sites. It just makes sense not to spend the money to have two separate research departments, especially when the Yahoo! search engine is widely regarded to be superior to Microsoft’s.

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Tags: Google, microsoft, yahoo

So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone. Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com, and others, plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer, Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing, and Blogates. A quick search for free blog on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are free to use. These include:

WordPress(the most popular software), Apache, Roller, Blosxom, Geeklog, Textpattern, LifeType.

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on your site. These include:

Community, Server, Movable, Type, Radio, UserLand.

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is that the process can often times be complicated. You have to download the software and install it to your server, which doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a good option for many people.

The Pros

It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start posting. It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging can do it easily. Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting. Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for you.

The Cons

You don’t have as many options to customize your blog. Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what is provided to you in terms of look and features. The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can possibly hurt traffic to your blog. Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to tweak the blog to your liking. Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right from your site. The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than those hosted on free sites. More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a restriction on how much space you have for things like photos and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much space as you need. The Cons

There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard. Updates aren’t as easy to post. You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog. However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be too hard. You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog, then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

Chris Haycock is an information publisher, specialising in helping others start and run their own successfull internet businesses. To find out more about the above, and to get an absolutely no cost two hour business blueprint video, go to http://www.easyebizz.com

Tags: blog, blog marketing

When somebody mentions something about a “landing page” or even a “doorway page” you immediately dismiss that as an archaic practice. But today with the search engines indexing almost every page of a website, “Every page of a site indexed by search engines is a potential landing page.”

In years past it was sometimes a tactic to create a single page for each search engine in the hope of winning top spot for a particular search phrase. This now heavily penalised practice of creating “gateway pages” was one of the earlier ways webmasters gamed the system.

But by landing page I’m not referring to a page that has been optimised for one specific keyword which would then lead you onto another webpage or even website, but rather a page that could possibly generate traffic to your website or even convert traffic. With so many pages including dynamically generated pages now ranking for search terms, each page is now a possible entry point for a search.

An important point to always remember is that each page is indexed by the search engines (or at least you hope it is if you’ve done your homework correctly). This would mean that each product in your catalogue has been indexed. While some websites simply put lists of products together many have pages dedicated to individual products. Each of these individual product pages could be a landing page for a search for that particular item.

While someone searching for “t-shirts” may find the home page of a multitude of suppliers, how many of those same sites would rank for the search “britney spears t-shirt”? This is where the optimisation of each page would come in handy. After all if your pages were optimised for their specific product they would be easier to find (and longer tail keywords do convert better). By the time the visitor reaches your website they are not only keenly looking for your product but are able to instantly find it at the page they find themselves on.

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Tags: Webmasters

Taking advantage of organic keywords rock - showing up on page 1 on Google or Yahoo for key terms is a great way to build traffic and is the dream of many webmasters. Lets look at how you can use organic keywords coupled with a little PPC to generate your site some amazing search results.

So, what is ‘organic keywords’? Organic keywords are those that appear naturally on your web site and contribute to the search engine ranking of the page. By taking advantage of those keywords, you can improve your site rankings without putting out additional budget dollars. The problem, however, is that gaining organic ranking alone can take four to six months or longer. To help speed the time it takes to achieve good rankings, many organizations (or individuals) will use organic keywords in addition to some type of PPC or pay for inclusion service.

To take advantage of organic keywords, you first need to know what those keywords are. One way to find out is to us a web-site metric application, like the one that Google provides. Some of these services track the keywords that push users to your site. When viewing the reports associated with keywords, you can quickly see how your PPC keywords draw traffic, and also what keywords in which you’re not investing still draw traffic.

Another way to discover what could possibly be organic keywords is to consider the words that would be associated with your web site, product, or business name. For example, a writer might include various keywords about the area in which she specializes, but one keyword she won’t necessarily want to purchase is the word “writer,” which should be naturally occurring on the site.

The word won’t necessarily garner high traffic for you, but when that word is combined with more specific keywords, perhaps keywords that you acquire through a PPC service, the organic words can help to push traffic to your site. Going back to our writer example, if the writer specializes in writing about AJAX, the word writer might be an organic keyword, and AJAX might be a keyword that the writer bids for in a PPC service.

Now, when potential visitors use a search engine to search for AJAX writer, the writer’s site has a better chance of being listed higher in the results rankings. Of course, by using more specific terms related to AJAX in addition to “writer,” the chance is pretty good that the organic keyword combined with the PPC keywords will improve search rankings.

So when you come to consider organic keywords, think of words that you might not be willing to spend your budget on, but which could help improve your search rankings, either alone or when combined with keywords that you are willing to invest in.

Guest post by Andy MacDonald, author of The SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters Blog.

Tags: keywords, SE Optimization

You’ve sold your client on a blog and you’ve developed a Blog Strategy. Plus you’ve made the blog much more implementable by coming up with 30 to 50 Blog Post ideas. But for this Blog Strategy to be really successful, one of the most important things that you can do is to manage your clients expectations.

Metrics without some point of comparison are just numbers. What turns that meaningless data into useful information is having a point of comparison.

Blog Benchmark figures are difficult to find.

Typically it’s only the top, very successful bloggers who make public their traffic figures, # of RSS feeds, etc. But for the average business blog, these are not a realistic benchmark for success.

In this post, I am going to provide business blog benchmarks. These benchmarks are based aggregate data across a broad range of clients.

1.) Common Measures:

Some of the most common measures of blog success include volume and engagement.

How many visitors does the blog get? Is that number increasing? Is it predominately repeat visitors coming in off your site or is your blog attracting new traffic too?

Number of visitors is really dependent on how broad your industry is. Small numbers are not a bad thing if this traffic is very targeted to your niche.

From what I’ve seen, average traffic benchmarks for a Small Business Blog = 1,ooo to 2,000 visitors per month; for Mid Sized Business = 10,000 - 20,000 visitors per month; Large, Enterprise-Sized Clients = 50,000 to 100,000 blog visitors per month. This is easily doable with a social media strategy.

What about engagement measures? Three great measures of how engaged your traffic is include Bounce Rate, Time Spent on the Site and Number of Page views.

While there are many factors that impact that bounce rate, as a general rule of thumb, you should consider a bounce rate below 20% to be excellent and over 60% to be fairly high. Between 20% and 60% whether these numbers are high or low really depends on what industry you’re in and if you have a high number of RSS subscribers.

Google Analytics measures a bounce as “the percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page”. This means that if you have a number of people sign up for RSS feeds, or read your blog daily. These “one-page-per-day” awesome visitors, will be counted as bounces.

Time spent on site is typically going to be much lower for your blog than for the rest of the site, particularly if your site is attracting a large number of return visitors.

Where time spent on site might average 4 or 5 minutes, time spent on your blog might only average 1.5 to 2 minutes. Time spent on your blog over 4-5 minutes (what would be considered average for the rest of your site) is quite good for a blog.

This is because it only takes about a minute to half read, half scan an average 800 word blog post. If your traffic is spending more than 3 minutes per visit and are visiting more than one post at a time then I’d consider your blog content to be engaging.

2.) Blogger Metrics

Most bloggers I know measure volume and engagement differently; in fact, RSS Feeds and Comments are darn near sacred.

Most people don’t publish their RSS Feed numbers until they get a decent number of subscribers. For some that means subscribers in the hundreds, for others it means subscribers in the thousands. Either way, this gives new bloggers unrealistic expectations for how to define success.

RSS Feeds rely heavily on building momentum. The first hundred RSS subscribers will probably take longer to build than it will the next two hundred. This is because it takes a whole lot of inertia to power something from nothing.

For a Business Blog, building your first 100 subscribers is a great achievement.

Most bloggers will agree that there is nothing so satisfying as knowing that you’ve engaged someone enough to stimulate a comment. I think that it’s because as bloggers we “put ourselves out there”.

Maybe we’re being as true to ourselves as we can be, or maybe we’re really honest. Whatever the case, as bloggers we expose our vulnerable side and then…

nothing.

We have no idea how our readers responded to the post.

Unless they comment. Comments turn your blog from a one way dialogue into a conversation.

How many comments should you aim for? Highly successful blog with thousands of subscribers will routinely get 50 to 100 comments per post. These blogs tend to be the most visible but they’re not a realistic benchmark for the average business blog.

For a new blog, getting one comment is an achievement. A solid stretch goal for your new business blog, should be to routinely get between 5 and 10 comments per post.
3.) Smoke and Mirrors Metrics

Some bloggers like to measure the “value of their blog”. This metric doesn’t really make sense for the average business blog though because they are unlikely to ever sell their blog. So if you’re never going to sell it; who cares what it’s worth?

Another measure of blog success often quoted is Technorati ranking. Technorati ranking is based on links to your site from other sites. For the typical business, this measure has very limited value. If you want to measure links to your blog then there are better tools to do this.

When used as a relative measure i.e. to compare your blog’s ranking to your competitors; then technorati can be somewhat interesting. But it should be considered a relative measure not an absolute measure.

4.) The most important metric of all.

ROE “Return on Energy”.

Apart from every other measure that I’ve discussed, the success of your client’s blog really just boils down to return on energy. Is the blog making them more money than the next best way they could spend their time and money?

One really cool way to measure the value of your blog traffic is to use Google Analytics. In Google Analytics you can set up your conversion tracking to measure Per Visit Goal Value [the average value (based on goal value) of a visit to your site].

For example, if every visitor who hits your homepage is worth $1.00, you may find that every visitor who visits the blog is worth $5.00.

Basically the ROE of your blog boils down to the following: Is the blog traffic spilling over to the site and are those visitors spending money?

and

are they spending more money than the value of your time invested and/or the amount of money that you are investing in your blog?

You’ve sold your client on a blog and you’ve developed a Blog Strategy. Plus you’ve made the blog much more implementable by coming up with 30 to 50 Blog Post ideas. But for this Blog Strategy to be really successful, one of the most important things that you can do is to manage your clients expectations.

Metrics without some point of comparison are just numbers. What turns that meaningless data into useful information is having a point of comparison.

Blog Benchmark figures are difficult to find.

Typically it’s only the top, very successful bloggers who make public their traffic figures, # of RSS feeds, etc. But for the average business blog, these are not a realistic benchmark for success.

In this post, I am going to provide business blog benchmarks. These benchmarks are based aggregate data across a broad range of clients.

1.) Common Measures:

Some of the most common measures of blog success include volume and engagement.

How many visitors does the blog get? Is that number increasing? Is it predominately repeat visitors coming in off your site or is your blog attracting new traffic too?

Number of visitors is really dependent on how broad your industry is. Small numbers are not a bad thing if this traffic is very targeted to your niche.

From what I’ve seen, average traffic benchmarks for a Small Business Blog = 1,ooo to 2,000 visitors per month; for Mid Sized Business = 10,000 - 20,000 visitors per month; Large, Enterprise-Sized Clients = 50,000 to 100,000 blog visitors per month. This is easily doable with a social media strategy.

What about engagement measures? Three great measures of how engaged your traffic is include Bounce Rate, Time Spent on the Site and Number of Page views.

While there are many factors that impact that bounce rate, as a general rule of thumb, you should consider a bounce rate below 20% to be excellent and over 60% to be fairly high. Between 20% and 60% whether these numbers are high or low really depends on what industry you’re in and if you have a high number of RSS subscribers.

Google Analytics measures a bounce as “the percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page”. This means that if you have a number of people sign up for RSS feeds, or read your blog daily. These “one-page-per-day” awesome visitors, will be counted as bounces.

Time spent on site is typically going to be much lower for your blog than for the rest of the site, particularly if your site is attracting a large number of return visitors.

Where time spent on site might average 4 or 5 minutes, time spent on your blog might only average 1.5 to 2 minutes. Time spent on your blog over 4-5 minutes (what would be considered average for the rest of your site) is quite good for a blog.

This is because it only takes about a minute to half read, half scan an average 800 word blog post. If your traffic is spending more than 3 minutes per visit and are visiting more than one post at a time then I’d consider your blog content to be engaging.

2.) Blogger Metrics

Most bloggers I know measure volume and engagement differently; in fact, RSS Feeds and Comments are darn near sacred.

Most people don’t publish their RSS Feed numbers until they get a decent number of subscribers. For some that means subscribers in the hundreds, for others it means subscribers in the thousands. Either way, this gives new bloggers unrealistic expectations for how to define success.

RSS Feeds rely heavily on building momentum. The first hundred RSS subscribers will probably take longer to build than it will the next two hundred. This is because it takes a whole lot of inertia to power something from nothing.

For a Business Blog, building your first 100 subscribers is a great achievement.

Most bloggers will agree that there is nothing so satisfying as knowing that you’ve engaged someone enough to stimulate a comment. I think that it’s because as bloggers we “put ourselves out there”.

Maybe we’re being as true to ourselves as we can be, or maybe we’re really honest. Whatever the case, as bloggers we expose our vulnerable side and then…

nothing.

We have no idea how our readers responded to the post.

Unless they comment. Comments turn your blog from a one way dialogue into a conversation.

How many comments should you aim for? Highly successful blog with thousands of subscribers will routinely get 50 to 100 comments per post. These blogs tend to be the most visible but they’re not a realistic benchmark for the average business blog.

For a new blog, getting one comment is an achievement. A solid stretch goal for your new business blog, should be to routinely get between 5 and 10 comments per post.
3.) Smoke and Mirrors Metrics

Some bloggers like to measure the “value of their blog”. This metric doesn’t really make sense for the average business blog though because they are unlikely to ever sell their blog. So if you’re never going to sell it; who cares what it’s worth?

Another measure of blog success often quoted is Technorati ranking. Technorati ranking is based on links to your site from other sites. For the typical business, this measure has very limited value. If you want to measure links to your blog then there are better tools to do this.

When used as a relative measure i.e. to compare your blog’s ranking to your competitors; then technorati can be somewhat interesting. But it should be considered a relative measure not an absolute measure.

4.) The most important metric of all.

ROE “Return on Energy”.

Apart from every other measure that I’ve discussed, the success of your client’s blog really just boils down to return on energy. Is the blog making them more money than the next best way they could spend their time and money?

One really cool way to measure the value of your blog traffic is to use Google Analytics. In Google Analytics you can set up your conversion tracking to measure Per Visit Goal Value [the average value (based on goal value) of a visit to your site].

For example, if every visitor who hits your homepage is worth $1.00, you may find that every visitor who visits the blog is worth $5.00.

Basically the ROE of your blog boils down to the following: Is the blog traffic spilling over to the site and are those visitors spending money?

and

are they spending more money than the value of your time invested and/or the amount of money that you are investing in your blog?

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.