Article Categories

• Advertising
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Business
• Ecommerce
• Google
• Linking Strategies
• Marketing
• RSS
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Security
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• Writing

SiteProNews Blogs

• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• Kalena Jordan
• Matt Jackson
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

Use Descriptive URLs to Bolster Your Search Engine Rankings!

By Phil in Technology

Dynamically generated pages, such as those made by PHP scripts, usually have URLs that aren’t very readable, like “mysite.com/script.php?id=3951&page=2″. The URL doesn’t say anything at all as to what the page is, other than showing that it’s generated by a script. If you want to make your dynamic pages more search engine friendly, rewrite your scripts to use descriptive URLs!

A URL like “mysite.com/blogpost/3951-People-Know-What-This-Is.html” would be a lot better, wouldn’t it? Right off the bat, you know what the page is about. If you’re scrolling through your recent pages, you can find exactly what you’re looking for a lot easier. More importantly though, search engines love URLs like these, so you get a nice rankings boost!

As a PHP programmer, I’m going to detail this technique with PHP, but the same principle applies to whatever serverside scripting language you use.

To start, have the script execute as a file without the extension, instead of with the .php extension (or or .jsp, or whatever extension your language uses). On Apache servers, you can use a ForceType statement in the .htaccess file to make the script execute as application/x-httpd-php. This tells Apache to run the file as a script instead of just spitting out your code.

Right now, your script should work properly as “mysite.com/script?id=3951&page=2″. It’s no longer readily apparent which language your site uses, but you can still tell that it’s a dynamic page. Let’s fix that next, by using PHP’s explode function to break up the argument list. Using this, the arguments to your script will look like folders on your server instead of parameters to a script:

$args = explode(”/”,$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']);

Now, if you were to access “mysite.com/script/3951/2″, $args would become an array with “3951″ and “2″. You can replace the slash with a hyphen to separate arguments without making them look like directory entries, or use a second explode statement to break down some of the arguments in a different way.

Finally, write some code that converts the title of the content (be it the blog post name, forum topic, etc.) into an argument, substituting dashes for spaces. Some people use underscores instead of dashes, but the search engines don’t see underscored words as separate terms, so you end up with the search engine thinking “This_Is_My_Post” is one big word.

Add a pinch of code at the top of the script to make ensure that the URL matches the one you want it to be (so it redirects thread/4614-wrong-name-1 to thread/4614-This-is-my-posts-name-1), then add .html to the end of it (so it looks like an innocent html file) and you’re good to go!

To prevent stuffing the url with words that don’t really matter, use the string replace functions to remove words such as “I”, “The”, and “And” from the URL.

Most search engines won’t completely index your website if it’s all stuffed into argument lists, so by having URLs that look like normal filenames you both ensure that all of your pages are indexed and increase your search engine optimization. Making your URLs readable by humans is juts an added bonus. Make sure to update the links within your site to reflect your new URLs, so your page doesn’t turn into a smattering of redirects.

About the Author: Phil runs a web development resource site. Find yourself asking, Where do I buy web hosting? Read all about it on Phil’s site!

Data Recovery: 10 Most Effective Computer Backup Tools

By Donna Gunter in Technology

Despite my best efforts, this past week I lost both my primary and secondary computer systems. After losing my primary desktop several years ago, I vowed I would never let myself be caught without an operating PC. As they say, “the road to h*ll is paved with good intentions,” and I once again was caught with my proverbial pants down without an operating computer when my desktop, which had been exhibiting some problem signs in the last month, died suddenly and would not turn on.

I then went to my laptop, which I had admittedly been lazy about keeping updated, and turned it on. Immediately the Windows update process started, and asked me install Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. Having done that successfully on my desktop, I wasn’t too worried about any installation problems on the laptop. However, upon completing the installation, the blue screen of death appeared, which is NEVER a good sign with a Windows-based system.

After trying for about an hour without success to revive my laptop (which is only 8 months old and still under warranty), I knew that I was in trouble and starting looking for alternatives. Fortunately, my husband keeps a laptop on hand that he uses for gaming when we travel, and he generously offered to let me install my programs and files on it until I could repair one of my computers.

After finally acknowledging that there was no way I could have foreseen this situation, I decided that I needed to s*ck it up, get over, and move on. So, I’m making do with a partially customized laptop that will do until one or the other of my PCs is returned.

Despite having gone through similar situations previously, I still learned a few new things along the way about data recovery and computer backup. Here are the 10 most effective tools that saved my bacon during my recent computer meltdown.

1. Automatic backup software. I’ve been using 2 online backups, Carbonite and Syncplicity. I have had to restore from Carbonite previously, and I found the process to be lengthy and somewhat confusing. So, several months ago I began using Syncplicity because it offers online access to all backed up files as well as the ability to synchronize an unlimited number of computers. However, it has taken a week to restore 20 GB of data with Syncplicity, and some of the data was wasn’t really restored, despite what Syncplicity told me in my account. However, I can easily download this missing info to my computer from the online vault. One process that makes this backup system easier is that I store all of my data files in My Docs so I don’t have to hunt them down in Program Files, or wherever they are typically stored.

2. Email client software. I still use the dinosaur Eudora for my email client. Old habits die hard, I suppose. However, somehow I missed marking some key Eudora folders to back up, and so I was initially using my webmail access providing by my hosting company to access email because of this oversight with Eudora. I began to tire of that quickly, as I had no way to create additional folders in those systems, so I then decided to manually configure Eudora and open folders and emails as I need them in the program. This experience has made me very tempted to change all of my incoming and outgoing email servers on all domains to Gmail just to have access to everything online, come hurricane, flood, tornado, or computer crash.

3. Bookmark service. I’m an avid researcher and resource collector, so having access to my bookmarks, or favorites file, is vital to my day-to-day operations. I had been using Spurl, but because of frequent periodic outages of their service, I’ve changed to Foxmarks. I like that this service offers me the ability to access all of these online, as well as have them at my fingertips any time I need them from my Bookmarks menu as well as easily synchronize them to any computer.

4. Contact management. Even though I don’t use Outlook for email, I do use it for calendar and contact management. I had been using Plaxo as an online backup for my contacts, but it doesn’t permit me to store my notes about each contact. I’ve been using Airset now for several months, and it regularly syncs my contacts (with notes) and my calendar to their online service. I found this much more convenient than trying to restore a backup PST file to Outlook and then repeating that again when my primary computer is returned. Instead, I just make changes to contacts and my calendar on Airset, and I’ll just sync that to Outlook on my desktop.

5. Passwords. I’ve been using Roboform for years to help me manage my passwords. I’ve got my Roboform data in My Docs, so it was a breeze to reinstall Roboform and copy the data folder to the new computer and permit me to access all of the sites requiring a password and username. Finally, something that worked seamlessly!

6. Project Management. Smartsheet has been my project management service for the last few months. I love that it has the ability to create an item and allow you to attach a document and discussion to that item. Rather than having to hunt down information about a project, all I had to do was log into my Smartsheet account and there it was.

7. Software licenses. Roughly 99% of the new software I install is downloaded and I don’t get a physical copy on CD. Therefore, I make sure that I have the downloaded version in a My Downloads folder that’s a part of My Docs file, which is backed up regularly. And, I make a PDF copy of the software license that I get by email and store in a Software folder, also in My Docs. Lastly, I purchased a very inexpensive program, Registration Vault, that lets me store all of my software license and purchase info and permits me to back up my data to My Docs. As I had to reinstall software on a new computer, it was easy to restore the Registration Vault files, get my software license number, and have a fully functioning piece of software within minutes.

8. Accounting. I use Quickbooks for my accounting needs, and while they do offer an online version, I haven’t yet moved to that. Instead, I back up Quickbooks after every use in the My Docs folder. When I needed to invoice consulting clients at the beginning of this month, all I had to do was reinstall Quickbooks and restore my latest backup. I instantly had everything I needed again at my fingertips.

9. Alternate free services. Some software I use, like CuteFTP and TraxTime, don’t permit data backups. So, I really do have to start all over with my FTP info and my time tracking info when my computer dies. Rather than installing these programs on the new computer, I just used some free alternatives to get me through. FireFTP, a Firefox add-on, has worked quite well for me as my FTP client, and MyHours.com has stood in fairly well for TraxTime, although it requires a few more steps for operation than TraxTime.

10. Email marketing. While not a tool, I discovered that both text and HTML versions of email broadcasts matter in email marketing. I wasn’t initially able to get my normal email client up and running, so I was reading my email from my webmail systems. I’ve got 2 hosting accounts, and the newer one has a fairly sophisticated webmail system and let me read HTML emails with no problem. The other, however, doesn’t permit HTML viewing. So, those emails sent only in HTML were ones that I was unable to read. If you’re wise and your email marketing program permits you to send emails out in both plain text and HTML, do it, even though it might seem like a needless pain. You just never know how members of your list might be forced to ready your emails.

As you might gather, I’ve discovered that online services have provided me with the greatest backup to help me through this computer crisis. My lesson? Duplicate as much as you can in online systems. In this way, you’ll have access to your data when you travel, when you have a computer crash, or when you’re faced with a natural disaster.

---

Internet Marketing Strategist & Boomer Biz Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses that they love by demystifying the tools & strategies needed to market and grow their businesses online. To claim your FR*EE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com. Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com

The Android Phone

By Anna Williams in Technology

Google and T-Mobile have teamed up to create a new breed of cell phone. The T-Mobile G1 is the world’s first Android Phone. An “android” is traditionally defined as a robot with human qualities. Perhaps the name was chosen because of the capabilities of this new phone.

It’s known as the T-Mobile G1 Android, the Android Phone, the G1 Phone, or (more informally) the Google Phone.

The G1 Phone integrates fully with your Google accounts. Here are a few of the features and capabilities of this new cell phone:

• An Android phone allows you to browse the Internet just as you would on a normal computer.
• It allows one to run several applications at the same time, on one phone. You can switch between applications, and you can also be notified when something new occurs on one of those applications.
• It allows you to chat and share photos on applications such as Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, etc.
• It allows you to copy URLs and share them with friends via a chat line, using a simple touch-screen interface.

The following Google applications can be accessed and used directly by the Android Phone:

• Google Maps
• YouTube
• Gmail
• Contacts
• Calendar
• IM (Instant Message)

All of these Google applications will be available to you with a single logon - and they will be automatically synchronized with the web. What that means is that any change you make in one of your google accounts from your phone will also show up the next time you log on from any other computer.

For example, when you are out and about with your phone and you meet a new contact, you might want to save their contact information. All you do is save it into your Google Contacts on your G1 phone. That information will be available to you online, in your Gmail account, and in any other applicable Google account, accessible by any computer in the world.

Any information you save on your phone in this way will appear on your computer as well - and vice-versa.

If you lose or break your phone, your data will still be there waiting for you on your Google account, which you can access from anywhere in the world. And there is no need to worry about your information being stolen, as its password-protected.

Here is another example of the a use of a Google Android phone. Once you have a contact address saved into your Google account, you can easily find that location on a map - using Google Maps, of course. And what’s more, you can access street level events in any area where this is available.

This makes it a breeze to get directions to a new location! Simply find your contact on a a map with a couple of clicks, and use a street-level view to find your way if needed!

Another example of the use of the this phone is the integration of the cell phone with your Google Calendar. Any event you save on your Google Calendar will be available to you on your phone, wherever you are. So you can access your schedule easily, on the go and from anywhere, as long as you have your phone with you.

No more schedule books! And you can probably say goodbye to those tiny notebooks and pads of paper you carry around to save your information.

What’s more, once you save information on your Android phone, there’s no need to transfer it over after you get home. Its all there, safely stored on your Google account, for ready access whenever you need it.

---

Anna Williams is a photographer and an artist who has traveled extensively in her life, and now works as an Internet Marketer. She thus appreciates the value of portability where digital equipment is concerned. She currently works as an Internet Marketer. Visit her website at Websites and Webhosting.

How Facebook Proxy Bypass Servers Work

By Peter Nisbet in Technology

Facebook proxy bypass servers are necessary if you have some reason to hide the IP address either of your internet connection, or of the site to which you are trying to connect. Why should anybody want to do this, and how do Facebook proxy providers work?

Why Use a Proxy Bypass?

If you work for an employer and have unmonitored internet access, then you can be barred from accessing certain internet addresses, such as those of the commonly used social networking sites. Facebook, Friendster, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube are the more common sites that employees tend to visit in company time. Your employer can stop this by preventing your computer from accessing the internet (IP) addresses of these sites.

If you have internet access at school, college or university, you will be even less supervised than at work, and few students have not tried to use school or college computers to access social networking sites. There again, the relevant IP addresses have a block or filter placed on them which only a proxy bypass can circumvent.

A block generally refers to a blanket bar placed on the entire network accessing specific addresses, while filters permit access to individual terminals, the users of which might have a legitimate use for them. Most sites are filtered while a few can be blocked, and a Facebook proxy might be needed by a student, for example, but not a faculty member.

The target websites themselves can place blocks on individual IP addresses, and if Friendster or Facebook has banned you and your internet address for some reason, then you can’t even re-register using a different name and email address unless you get a new internet connection with a different IP address. Facebook proxy bypass servers can enable you to re-register without changing your IP address. You can also access your home page using your regular login details.

How a Facebook Proxy Bypass Server Works

If computer A connects to website B, then the IP address of both A and B are known to each other. All it takes to sever that connection is for either to block the other. However, if A connects to site C, and C connects to B, neither A nor B sees each other - they both see only IP address C.

Therefore, a block or filter against B will not be triggered by the address of C, to which you are connected. Neither will any block place by B on A be triggered, because as far as B is concerned it is connected to C and not A. The term ‘proxy bypass’ is therefore a bit of a misnomer because it is more of a proxy ‘router’; many different computers can be rerouted by a central connection to a number of social websites (or any type of website in fact).

For example, if you are finding it difficult to connect to a specific website, such as a search engine, you can do so through a proxy. The principle behind a Facebook proxy is just the same as that of you connecting your computer to a router in a network to connect to the internet - all computers connected to that router will have the same address, and when you use a modem attached to your computer to bypass the router through a different internet connection, you will have a different IP address.

Proxy bypass sites don’t last forever. Once they have been detected and also blocked, you have to find another. However they can last for a long time, and new Facebook proxies are coming online as fast as they are being blocked. For that reason you should find a site that offers you a number of alternatives.

So next time you have difficulty accessing a specific website, whether it is Facebook, YouTube or anything else a proxy can help you. Bear in mind that they are rarely specific, and take the form of an address bar into which you enter the internet address of the site you want to access. In the case of a Facebook proxy bypass server you enter the Facebook address, but it usually also works with any other website address.

---

Peter Nisbet - More information on Facebook proxy servers and others are available on Pete’s web page Facebook Proxy where you will also find several working proxies that are regularly updated.

Use Online Surveys To Build Customer Trust And Loyalty And Thrive During The Recession

By Darrell Howell in Technology

The ongoing financial crisis and talk of recession has left a lot of Internet marketers worried about whether they will be able to stay in business over the coming months and years. Many people who now work from home on the Internet are also worried about whether or not they will be able to continue selling their products and services.

However, an economic crisis also offers opportunities as well as dangers. In times of anxiety and economic uncertainty the business that responds to customers’ needs and wins their trust is the one that will survive and prosper in the midst of doom and gloom.

Because of the interactive nature of the Internet it offers many opportunities for online marketers to get to know their customers and website visitors, learn what they want and respond to their needs by engaging them in a friendly, informal dialogue that develops into a relationship of trust.

This relationship building process can be done in several ways, for example by inviting people to comment on your blog posts and then responding with follow-up comments. Another option is to participate in forums that attract your target market. Social network marketing sites, email, instant messaging and Skype all offer the Internet marketer opportunities to communicate with clients at various levels of intensity in order to discover where they are coming from and build rapport with them.

The key is to build trust by listening and then following up with products and services that meet their needs at prices that suit their pockets. Remember, it takes time to build trust. Trust is a two way process that is both rational and emotional. You cannot win a prospect’s trust without putting in some preliminary spade work. Rushing at them with products first is not a great way to raise your credit rating with your prospects.

One good way of getting to know your target market better is to set up an online survey and offer your prospects an incentive to complete it. The great thing about online surveys is that they take full advantage of the interactive nature of the internet and are cheap or even free to run as well as being easy to set up. You can use online platforms such as Surveypro.com or Surveymonkey.com to set up and manage your survey from.

You can use a customer survey to find out about your customers’ impressions of the products or services you offer. Another approach is to keep the survey focused firmly on the customer. Either way, make sure you have a clear focus from the beginning so that everybody knows why they are taking the survey.

Offer your prospective survey takers an incentive to do the survey such as a free report or ebook that can be downloaded on completion.

Keep the survey short, invite “yes” or “no” answers by asking closed-ended questions, include some multiple choice questions and assure participants that any private information they give you will remain confidential.

When you look over the results keep an eye out for trends and surprises.

Publish the results of the survey on your website or blog and invite comments.

The whole process of survey taking and reporting should be treated as a trust-building exercise and an opportunity for increased interaction with your client base.

A successful survey campaign will also have brought you a lot of valuable information about your target market which you can now use to present your prospects with goods and services that more closely match their needs and win their loyalty.

So, in recessionary times, a customer survey is an excellent tool for building stronger ties with your target market, winning the trust of your clientele and thriving in the midst of recession.

---

Darrell Howell is an Internet Marketer and Blogger. Check out his Blog at http://www.blueridgemoney.info Sign up for a free Internet Marketing Newsletter here.

Heads Up! We’re About to Be Attacked by Androids! And That’s a Good Thing!

By Catharine P. Taylor in Technology

I’M WRITING TODAY ABOUT GOOGLE’S Android mobile OS (that’s operating system for you Luddites, none of whom, come to think of it, read this column) because it’s the only appropriate topic to discuss right now. As many of you know, the so-called G-phone, (really a T-Mobile handset called the G1). is going on sale today, and with that, the world of social computing will never be the same, even if the term “social computing” strikes me as somewhat oxymoronic..

It’s true that my circle of Twitterati has yet today to offer up a play-by-play on G-phone sales the way they did in July when Apple introduced the iPhone 3G. (Though, according to  this report, there were 150 people lined up last night outside a San Francisco mobile store, waiting to buy a G1.) But no matter. The reason Android matters is that it will provide much more scale to the market for mobile apps. And while not all apps are social, many, many of them will be.

If, like me, you’re among those of us who haven’t necessarily been paying close attention to Android, here’s why it may end up being bigger than the iPhone: Google, rather than offering hardware (a handset) coupled with a proprietary OS, such as is the case with the iPhone, is offering up just an OS, for free, that it hopes will be picked up all over the world, by handset makers and carriers. As operating systems are usually licensed, for a hefty fee, that’s huge, and should help grease the market for Android. (As if the fact that it’s coming from Google, and everyone — except for the ad industry and the government — trusts Google, weren’t enough.)

Last night, I had a chat with Steve Jang, CMO of social music service iMeem, which launched an Android mobile app yesterday. “We’ve wanted to build a mobile app for a very long time,” he said. To iMeem, the decision to first build an Android app, which essentially ports the iMeem experience to a user’s mobile device, was about the possibility. Android could transform what is still a nascent marketplace into one in which developers get to develop to the same broad user base they’ve long had on the Web. The mobile version of iMeem will allow its community to do lots of cool things with their music, including listening to stations that are continuously updating their music, and buy MP3s through the Amazon MP3 store. But without the potential for a big enough mobile footprint, such offerings might be back-burnered. Imagine, Jang says, if you had to build “a different Web site for every type of laptop.”

Yes, iMeem is also building an app for the iPhone, but it’s worth noting that it unleashed the Android app first, even though the iPhone is obviously way head of Android right now in terms of market share.

True, there will be hurdles to Android adoption. The Android Market, where G1 owners can access apps, was stripped down to a mere 13 earlier this week, supposedly because Android developers were working out the kinks in the 50 they promised to have up and running at launch. (According to  this post on Mashable, all 50 are now up.)

But read enough headlines, and you can see where this is going. MySpace launched its Android mobile app on Friday. Motorola is said to be launching its Android-powered phone next year, giving it a special slant toward social nets like MySpace and Facebook, and, not to be outdone by Apple and Google, RIM opened its own app store for the Blackberry yesterday. This market, whether most of it runs over Android or not, is about to become very, very vibrant.

How soon advertisers follow is hard to say, but, if history is any guide, being able to reach a sizeable market through a handful of operating systems will be endlessly helpful in streamlining already-overburdened production needs for varying platforms. Jang says that iMeem was contacted about mobile ad opportunities by some of its advertisers — which include AT&T, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Toyota — before the iMeem mobile launch.

As those advertisers probably know, social is meant to be mobile. And mobile-enabled social is about to be big.

Catharine P. Taylor has been covering digital media and advertising for almost 15 years. She currently writes daily about advertising on her blog, Adverganza.com and can be reached at cathyptaylor@gmail.com

3 Hidden Traffic Tactics

By Kim Roach in Technology

If you’re like me, then you’ve probably heard all about article marketing, SEO, video marketing, social bookmarking, press releases, blogging, etc…

They are the cornerstones of Internet Marketing. And they work. But sometimes don’t you just want to read about something new. I know I do. In fact, every time I discover a new traffic technique, it’s like opening a shiny new present on Christmas morning.

And I’m hoping I can give you that feeling with this article, because I’m about to reveal 3 traffic methods that you may not have heard of yet.

1. Download Sites - You can get thousands of visitors with download sites, even if you’ve never programmed a day in your life.

Here’s what I do. I take my articles and turn them into EXE files. This allows me to submit my article to hundreds of software directories, sending me hundreds of one-way links and visitors.

Now, here’s a quick tip on how you can use this technique to build your subscriber list quickly. Require people to register for your software (in this case your ebook is considered software) before they are able to read your ebook. This allows you to grow your list quickly simply by recycling your articles and turning them into EXE files.

You can turn your articles into EXE files using some free software called WebSiteZip Packer. This software will allow you to turn an HTML page into a solid executable file (.exe) with an integreated HTML browser.

Quick Tip: This is an excellent way to get hundreds of one-way backlinks by using those PLR articles you have laying around.

Since you’re converting the articles into software, you don’t have to worry about duplicate content. Just one of your plr articles can now generate you 100’s of one-way backlinks by converting it into software and submitting it to all the different software directories.

Here’s a list of some of the top download sites you can submit to…

Download.com
Tucows.com
Versiontracker.com
Jumbo.com
freedownloadcenter.com
regnow.com
regsoft.com
5star-shareware.com
shareit.com
topshareware.com
passtheshareware.com
sharewarejunkies.com
softpedia.com
shareware.com

Plus, Google loves these authority sites, especially Download.com. I’ve found many of my software titles ranking on the front page of Google with these high-authority download sites.

2. Get your articles into Google News. Google News has become very popular in the past couple years and can send you a ton of traffic. To get your article into Google news, all you have to do is get published on one of the many sites that is syndicated by Google News.

I personally use the American Chronicle.

You can sign up for an author’s account and start submitting articles. Once your article is published, it will be listed on 20 sites owned by the American Chronicle as well as Google News.

This strategy can send you a lot of traffic, especially if you use the right keywords.

3. Webwire.com. I have saved the best for last…

Webwire.com is a hidden gem that I have been using to rank on the front page of Google within 24 hours.

Here’s a quick overview of how I am able to capture front page rankings…

First, I title my press release with the keyword phrase that I want to rank for. I have found that keyword phrases with a competition of less than 30,000 (in quotes) in Google rank really well.

I then make sure to include the phrase and variations in the first and last paragraph. Sprinkle it in but don’t go hog wild.

This simple formula has landed me multiple front page rankings and thousands of visitors.

Kim Roach - For step-by-step videos on how you can get front page rankings within 24 hours, go to http://www.buzzblogger.com/traffic

How To Build Trust & Increase Conversions By Using Voice Overs on Your Sales & Landing Pages

By Stephanie Ciccarelli in Technology

Your website is a useful tool for making sales in your sleep, but could it be making even more money for you during those twilight hours?

Every good marketer knows: The MEDIUM is the MESSAGE.

When someone is reading your sales copy and about to make a purchase, all they really get from you socially perhaps is some cleverly written text that outlines the features and benefits that state why they should go ahead and take their credit card out of their wallet.

What if you could up the ante and reach those prospects on a heightened, more emotional level?

You can! How?

Use surprisingly affordable professional voice overs on the landing page or sales page.

Voice overs help to build trust and make an instant connection with the people who visit your website.

Adding a voice over isn’t just another bell or whistle to your website, you’ll be ingeniously employing another medium to help you communicate your message, in this case, delivering your message using audio via your website.

By getting up close and personal at the point of sale, you’ve found another way to persuade prospective customers to buy, and as a bonus, have also given the world a better idea of who your company is through audio branding, using the human voice to start a favorable relationship that is profitable and engaging.

And… like most people, you’re probably strapped for time and likely haven’t given too many “outside the box” ideas any consideration, but that’s where voice overs could really strike gold.

The majority of people haven’t considered (let alone know about) strategic placement of professional audio on landing pages & sales pages.

What could be better than a more personalized approach to welcome the visitor to your site and set the tone for a potential sale?

You can achieve that human connection by using the intimacy and power of the human voice by way of a voice over recording that puts your customers at ease when they are deciding whether to continue on, their visit ideally resulting in a purchase made at your website.

In short, adding a voice over to your sales & landing pages will:

1. Make your website more human
2. Encourage prospects to buy
3. Give the impression that you are present

You’ll notice a dramatic difference in how you can communicate with prospective buyers and establish a personal relationship without having to do the initial networking.

You may also see an increase in your conversion rates which is after all what you’re going for, right?

What should your voice over recording say?

Take a good look at the copy on the sales or landing page. Your voice over should be a conversational representation of the words on the page without “reading” the words on the page.

What I mean by this is that your voice over should elaborate on the points, not regurgitate them just as you would present a PowerPoint presentation. You may not read the slides verbatim, however, you do regard the bullet points on the slides as a guide and touchstone to move the conversation along and way of reinforcing the principal message leading to a successful conversion.

Once you have scripted your message, most messages being about 1 minute to 3 minutes in length, the next step is to have it professionally recorded either by an experienced “voice” actor or by you in a decent sound studio.

You can hire freelance professionals easily online, just post a job on a voice talent directory.

---

Stephanie Ciccarelli is the Vice President of Marketing and co-founder of Voices.com , the voice over marketplace. A vocal major and graduate from the Don Wright Faculty of Music at the University of Western Ontario, Stephanie is able to translate years of classical music training, theory and performance into practical applications within the voice over industry. Specializing in public relation and copy writing, her presence and persona embody the Voices.com brand through partner sites like PodcastingVoiceTalent.com.

Video Search Engine Optimization

By Randy Zlobec in Jerry Bader's Blog

Video Search Engine Optimization - Most of us know that a site that’s well configured for search engine access is a major part of getting high traffic levels. However, you might not have thought about optimizing your video as well as the rest of your site. Since multimedia content is becoming a much more popular way of distributing information, correct video search engine optimization is important.

For instance, on YouTube alone (which accounts for more than ninety-eight percent of the videos viewed via Google), more than eighty-two million people watched over four billion videos last year. That makes YouTube both the top video sharing site and the top video search engine.

YouTube receives as much as thirteen hours of new user-submitted video every minute, and more than fifty percent of the people watching videos online share links with other people. So, getting a good YouTube ranking could be an important way to bring people to your site.

For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get exposure, ad income, and free traffic. Being discovered by the viewers has to happen before you can get lots of views. That means making sure that your data is rich in meta information, and that you use quality RSS or MRSS feeds that you update on a regular basis.

Make sure that your meta data is well placed and relevant to the topic. A cleaner can help you remove distracting or irrelevant meta information from the file.

Only after you produce well optimized content should you contact the search engines and submit your video. This places you in the queue of web crawlers, and means you’ll be indexed more quickly and more often than if you hadn’t bothered to submit. The more regularly your content is crawled, the better your chance of rating well on search results.

Index your site on other engines than Google or YouTube. They can spread your video to other search engines you may not have thought of. For instance, indexing your site on Blinkx will cause it to show up on Ask and MSN, among others.

One important part of your strategy should be a series of related videos. When a viewer sees a video online that he or she likes, there’s a good likelihood that this viewer will look for others like them. While a single great video will be popular and welcomed, you’ll do even better if it’s part of a series.

Use an embedded video player, too. Many viewers will be more inclined to view your submission if it’s part of your site or blog than if they had to go to your video hosting service to see it. However, you should avoid players that use only Flash. Don’t use pop-up players, which annoy more people than they amuse, and will actually cause you to lose views.

The more views you get, the more likely you are to be picked up by other sites, linked to, and rank well on video searches. You can even customize embedded video players to display playlists related to your company, and adjust the layout, and other information.

Create traffic by placing a video search box on your site. This adds unique content and boosts ad revenue. Make sure that you create a video of the appropriate length for your audience, and that you’re looking for the right response.

You can use analytics to find out how long a customer stays on your video page, which will tell you if your video is too long. You can also use analytics to tell you which of your videos get the best response. Once you know this, you’ll be able to decide which content should be linked first on your home page.

Remember that no webcrawler has ever bought a product or a service. If you’re a local business using video to advertise, clicks are a lot less important than calls. Include a call to action with your contact information as part of your video - thumbnails are an excellent way to do this. You can use YouTube to create thumbnails at the quarter, half, and three-quarter marks. Making sure that you have both a local listing and a video listing on Google’s Search Engine Results Page also increases your likelihood of getting visits.

You may also wish to make sure that your videos are high enough quality for and in the right format for television. Google TV is very affordable, and lets you create closely targeted video.

Don’t use Active X controls and export all files as swf format. Use Google Video sitemaps to help with navigation, and build a separate page for each video, rather than hosting many videos on the same page. Use a simple text title and description, and optimize that page as you would any other. Then, link to it from the index page.

Descriptions and titles need to be consistent across all your sites, and file names should descriptive and make sense to the viewer. Remember that Different communities require different approaches. Prominent keywords can help on many sites. However, while keyword rich content will help videos hosted on your site be noticed by Blinkx or Truveo, it won’t help on YouTube.

You’ll need to get the attention of the community in general. Video responses to popular, related videos can help get others to visit your contribution. Your content will appear in close proximity to videos that are already popular. Make sure you include an active URL in the description of your video, and end the video with a mention of the link. Annotations can help you link to other YouTube videos. Be sure to allow comments!

Never tag with irrelevant search terms, no matter how popular they might be. Remember that you need to appeal to real people, rather than just optimizing blindly. While you might turn up early in a search with good optimization, an unappealing video will cause people to pass you by. If you know what kind of content your audience prefers, you’ll be able to create the right video marketing plan for your business or organization.

Video search engine optimization is an important part of any video marketing strategy. If you’re planning to market your business or organization using multimedia content, creating it correctly and surrounding it with the right keywords and other information can help it be noticed. Before you submit a video, make sure it’s optimized.

---

Randy Zlobec, president of RZ Concepts, Inc. an Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
company specializing in top placement throughout the Major Search Engines. RZ Concepts has been in business since 1996. Visit the corporate website at http://www.rzconcepts.com

Thank You Cuil, My Search Results Needed Random Irrelevant Pictures

By Jason Bland in Jerry Bader's Blog

I was just thinking several months ago while doing a Google search how nice it would be if my search results were accompanied by completely random non-relevant images and icons.

It was a big deal, a group of Google expats raise thirty million dollars to stick a group of servers together and suddenly call themselves a search engine. In earlier news releases, Cuil even talked about how their results were less dependant on links than that of Google. So, we ran a little test to see if this was true.

Does anybody remember the “miserable failure” Google bomb? A group of anti-Bush bloggers and webmasters linked the keyphrase “miserable failure” to U.S. President George Bush’s official Whitehouse.gov web site. Regardless of the fact that the site doesn’t use the phrase “miserable failure”, the site ranked number one in Google. Google fixed the problem and resulting searches for “miserable failure” became content based.

When Cuil launched, I noticed a spike in traffic to the article resources on my company’s web site generated from Cuil. People immediately searched for “miserable failure”. Guess what is number four, Whitehouse.gov. Look one row below that and you will see my article titled “Google Repairs Miserable Failure”. Next to it, ‘The Onion’ logo.

I was just thinking several months ago while doing a Google search how nice it would be if my search results were accompanied by completely random non-relevant images and icons. Thank you Cuil for making this a reality.

The “engineers” at new search engines like the now forgotten Accoona like to come up with new looks and logos while completely ignoring what makes Google so popular. Unlike the Ask.com post Interactive Media buyout commercials saying “Don’t just use something out of habit [Google]“, people use Google because its clean and gives relevant results.

Users are not demanding results be displayed in some mid-90’s frame based design style. They want something fast, clean, and relevant. You want to do something useful with your undeserved $30 million of venture capital? How about you make something as fast, clean, and relevant as Google only with page rankings not changing ever 20 seconds.

I speak from experience. Several years ago I too developed a search engine which is now a huge online resource. We started a search engine then we quickly saw that only 2% of our users were actually doing web searches on it. So we spent a tiny amount of money integrating into Yahoo’s API for the search results then built a network of individual interest channels. Because new content on the web is far more valuable than a new way to find it. Especially if that new way displays irrelevant picture eye-candy in a framed search result screen.

Yahoo actually figured it out a long time ago. According to Alexa, Yahoo gets the most traffic of any other web site in the world. Yet, Google is delivering more than 70% of online search queries. See, Yahoo figured out that Google’s search was superior to theirs so they began investing heavily in their “channels of interest” sections.

When your product is inferior, know what you can be good at, excel in that, and don’t reinvent a wheel that is not broken. Oh, and free up some venture capital funding for real technological innovations.

Jason Bland is with guaranteed search engine optimization company, Adviatech Corp. Adviatech is one of the leading SEO firms offering results based online marketing solutions. To learn more about guaranteed SEO services, visit http://www.adviatech.com.

© Copyright 2009 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

Home Newsletter Archives SEO Forums Webmaster Tools Webmaster Resources Link to SPN Top SEO Tools Website Templates SPN Partners Contact Us Privacy Advertise

ExactSeek SiteProNews MetaWebSearch GoArticles EzineHub ISEDN DropJack NewWebDirectory.com SEO-News SEO-News Forums Blog Search FreeWebSubmission SmartWebGadgets