Youtube as a Learning Device

One of the great things about the internet is that it can be a great resource and a learning tool. Recently, many companies and individuals, especially Google, have been adding instructional videos and tutorials to Youtube. It is a great concept, watch a quick video and get a basic understanding of what you are trying to learn.

But how do you improve on that or more importantly how do you make what could be a boring video more interesting, you can of course make it humorous, or you could have it set to music, or even better rapped over a hip hop track.

For instance, check out the Poetic Prophet (aka the SEO Rapper) and his rhymes on Design Coding.

Time Management Tips for Bloggers

With blogging becoming a full time or part time job for people these days, it’s definitely a challenge to keep on top of updating your blog with all the other things to do in our everyday lives. We all feel like there isn’t enough time in the day sometimes, so it’s important to make good use of the time we have.

Creating Goals
So you decided to put up your own blog and you find yourself finding ways to build more traffic and a larger readership. A small goal such as getting more RSS subscriptions to your blog will make you think of ways on how you can achieve that goal. Even a small goal will motivate you to improve your blog little by little.

Planning Ahead
A great way to keeping fresh content going on your blog is to plan ahead. Create a list of topics and ideas that you know you can write about. You can also create a schedule of when you will post to your blog. Fresh content is important, but from my past experience, it’s better to have quality posts spread throughout the week, rather than multiple short posts a day.

Having Deadlines
Making deadlines to when a post should go up on your blog is another way to keep your blog flowing with content. Bloggers that run a blog alone tend to be lazy at times with putting up content, which can become a habit, resulting in an abandoned blog. An example would be posting a blog post by 4pm, which will motivate you to get it finished. You’ll feel better about yourself that you got the job done.

LinkedIn.com Adds Company Profiles

LinkedIn, a professional social networking site added a new feature last week where companies can create their own company profiles to be listed in the LinkedIn Company Directory. In the past, LinkedIn only permitted individuals to sign up and create a personal profile that somewhat resembled a resume. This profile could be used for networking, finding jobs, or staying in touch with old friends or colleagues. Now, in addition to the personal profiles, companies can build their own profile page broadcasting their areas of specialization, location, number of employees, new hires, website, etc.

The great thing about LinkedIn is that personal profile pages are public and get crawled by the search engines. Therefore your profile page can show up in the search results. If the company profile pages go public, there is the potential for your company’s LinkedIn profile page to show up in the search results, which is an additional way to promote your product or business.

Many companies, such as Yahoo and Google (screen shot below), have already created their LinkedIn company profile page.

To read more on LinkedIn’s company profiles, you can visit their blog.

Have You Been Rick Rolled?

What is being "Rick Rolled" you might ask? One thing we know for sure about the Internet, it is a place for creativity, surprise and a hefty dose of shenanigans.

The latest Internet prank involves sending someone a link to a video that sounds promising - something you can't wait to see (like Whitney Houston ACTUALLY smoking crack, or Britney having her latest meltdown). But, when you click on it, you end up here where you are subjected to what is surely one of the most cheeseball music videos every created.

As of this posting, the video has been viewed 8,119,804, with 29,048 comments.

Not that's viral. :)

In an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of this prank, there is even a website www.YouGotRickRolled.com which features advertising and an explanation of where it originated.

Are You Addicted To The Web?

Do you need the Internet, feel alone when you can’t text message, always wondering who’s on Instant Messenger? You may be diagnosed with…"Internet addiction"!!!!

Doctors are now pushing to include “Internet addiction” in the psychiatry’s official handbook of mental illness, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” being printed in 2012. Internet addiction is defined as excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations, and email/ text messaging.

The latest researcher Dr. Jerald Block of the Oregon Health and Science University claims tech junkies “display a debilitating behavior, including drug-like cravings, withdrawal and constant need for more and better gear.”

Psychiatrists claim that “Internet addiction” could be affecting up to 10% of people today and will continue to grow. The highest age group facing this addiction is teenagers with the online gaming.

The Internet Bah! (Newsweek Headline)

I just happened to come across a Newsweek Article titled "The Internet, Bah! Hype Alert: Why Cyberspace isn't, and will never be, Nirvana" The article goes into many reasons on how the internet is not going to change the world, some of my favorites.

• The article speaks about how no online databases will replace the daily newspaper.
• That usenet more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harassment and anonymous threats.
• No one wants to read a book on a disc, or take a laptop to the beach, the article even states "that you'll soon be able to buy books and newspapers straight over the internet."
• The internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data, lacking reviewers or critics. and there are even those pushing computers into schools, which the article states is a waste.
• Cyberbusiness, the article states that we are promised instant catalog shopping, just point and click for great deals, you'll be able to order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations, and also there isn't even a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet.
• The one thing missing from the electronic wonderland the internet supposedly created- human contact.

The article summarizes its view in this final sentence, "A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where- in the holy names of Education and Progress- important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

This article was from the February 27, 1995 issue of Newsweek, a lot sure has changed in just over 12 years. I wonder what Clifford Stoll thinks now of the internet, a quick google search led me to this wikipedia page about him, which has him selling water over the internet and teaching physics to grade school kids.

College Gossip Website JuicyCampus.com Sparks Media Attention

As I watched The Today Show yesterday, I saw a segment on the website juicycampus.com. Not familiar with this website, I immediately logged onto my computer and explored. I was amazed at what I saw. All you have to do when you enter this site is type in the name of one of the 57 colleges featured on the site, and you can view or post “juicy gossip” about your fellow classmates or faculty. There is no login required and all the posts on this website are anonymous. Therefore, if you have beef with a girl in one of your classes, you can call her out on the site for all her imperfections, post it live, and no one will ever know you posted it! As a result, this website is sparking a lot of attention.

With the more recent case involving a teenager committing suicide after receiving nasty messages on myspace.com, where do we draw the line with online social communities? Lawyers have been trying to ban this site but have been unsuccessful up until this point. Juicycampus.com states on their site that they ban offensive material, yet inappropriate remarks are still being posted daily. With just a couple of clicks online, ones reputation at a university can be destroyed! While online social communities promote free speech and encourage users to participate online and become more active, should a website of this nature be illegal?

Additional information on Juicy Campus can be found here.

Get Updates On Your Friends Via RSS Through FriendFeed

When you think RSS feeds, you usually think of blog posts from your subscribed blogs. RSS in my opinion is a great way to constantly stay updated, and I recently found a new RSS Feed site called FriendFeed, which updates you on your friends through a personalized RSS feed. FriendFeed aggregates activity from the sites that you choose through web crawling technologies similar to those used by search engines. It’s pretty easy to get started, since you basically need to provide your username and password to the sites that are currently supported. Sites that FriendFeed supports include blogs, del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Google Reader, iLike, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo and YouTube. You can even keep track of friends that don’t have a FriendFeed account but use the supported sites. I think FriendFeed is a pretty neat way to keep you updated on your friends without having to log into the many social networking sites we’re all a part of.

Set Up Your iGoogle!

Are you ready for some NCAA mayhem? Google is too!!! You can track your bracket through iGoogle; all you have to do is set up a league, even if you just want to manage your own brackets. Google will show you how you are doing and even let you watch more than one bracket on your page.

So, no matter where you submit your bracket, have Google track your teams. Get ready for some great action and huge upsets as this is going to be a very interesting tournament!

5 Easy Steps to get Visitors to Subscribe to your Blog

So you finally caught up to speed and you created your first blog (it’s about time!). Once you get the hang of it, you start blogging regularly about your product, service or hobby. The one issue you find yourself having is that no one seems to be subscribing to your blog! You spend hours each day writing blog posts yet you have no one to share your juicy content with. The following are some simple steps to get people interested in your blog and wanting to subscribe to read more.

1. Have your blog subscription towards the top of the blog where it is clearly visible to all your visitors. You want to make sure your subscription is easily found. If visitors have to go searching to figure out how to subscribe, they are likely going to leave your blog.

2. If your blog theme is not about anything technical, educate your blog readers with a blog post about what online subscriptions (RSS feeds) are. Then put a link under your subscriptions area linking to this post as a reference.

3. Make sure your blog has a main focus. If your blog discusses too many unrelated topics, your visitors will not know what to expect from your site if they return. For example, if you are a wedding photography website, you can blog about photography techniques, past weddings you have photographed, or even wedding tips. Be sure you stick with a theme for the blog so that visitors want to come back to learn more on your topic. If you discuss everything that pops into your head, visitors will not know what to expect when they come back to your site and they might not want to subscribe, or even come back at all.

4. Post in forums related to your industry. If you become active in your online community, people might want to learn more about you and start reading your blog regularly.

5. Post comments on other industry related blogs. Read other blogs related to your industry and post comments when they seem useful and provide a link back to your blog. The more involved you become online, the more often people will recognize your name and want to read your blog.

Search Spend Healthy Despite Slowing Economy – SEMPO Reports

On March 17, 2008, SEMPO (the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) released their preliminary results of the 2007 State of the Market Survey at Search Engine Strategies New York.

According to the report, they're bullish on the future of online marketing, noting that much of the additional funds are available due to marketers shifting from offline to online tactics. This means a boon for the online marketing industry as Search spend takes away from magazines, direct mail and newspapers.

Additional preliminary published data can be found here.

A rise in Search spend is also the result of the increasing cost of PPC and additional interest in online opportunities, such as streamlined behavioral and demographical targeting.

Spend some time with Internet Superstars Craig Newmark (Founder of Craig's List), Jason Calacanis, Matt Cutts and Avinash Kaushik

Over the past several weeks we have sat down with several Superstars of the Internet for discussions on our Podcast including the founder of Craig's List Craig Newmark , Jason Calacanis co-founder of Weblogs Inc and the new search engine Mahalo.com, Google's Search Engine luminary Matt Cutts and Avinash Kaushik Google's Analytics Evangelist and host of the Occam's Razor Blog.

Have you listened to the Podcast? What do you think? Please join our two-way conversation, call our call-in line 206-888-6606 and the system will digitize your call and we'll play it on the show!

Ten Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 20 Mahalo and Weblogs founder Jason Calacanis, an eBay Kafuffle, rebel Ted Murphy from PayPerPost.com, Alpha start-up Seesmic.com , new competitive analysis tool Compete.com, Song of the Week Oscar Winner ‘Falling Slowly’


10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 19 Sit down with the visionary CraigsList.com Founder Craig Newmark, Larry Port's Joke-of-the-week, eBay Expert Debbie Levitt, Ten steps to launch and promote your own podcast, all about Webkins.com, review MSN’s bid for Yahoo!, Song of the Week John Romano’s Strawberry.

10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 18 The Amazing Avinash Kaushik Author of Analytics: An Hour A Day and Analytics Evangelist from Google.com , Podcast-of-the-Week Joseph Jaffe's 'Jaffe Juice', Song-of-the-Week Alice Cooper Live at Montreux ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’

Ten Golden Rules Website Marketing Podcast featuring Google Engineer Matt Cutts, Link building expert Todd Malicoat, DMOZ Co-founder Chris Tolles, The Top 10 New Product Launches of 2007, Podcast-of-the-week Librivox.org

Tragic Crane Accidents In New York City

Ten Golden Rules client David H. Perecman, a veteran NYC construction accident lawyer expressed sadness at this weekend’s New York City Crane Construction Accidents. “Once again the people in the City of New York are witness to the tragic deaths of innocent construction workers resulting from questionable construction practices.” said Mr. Perecman. "Saturday's crane collapse is yet another construction site mishap in the seemingly endless string of accidents where construction workers die or are injured in height related accidents. Deaths from construction accidents have been on the rise in New York City and a main factor has been unsafe working conditions caused in part by laws that don’t protect the workers and the residents"

Mr. Perecman is the current Secretary of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association (NYSTLA) and a chair of its Construction Accident Law Committee. “Recent New York court decisions have made it more difficult to hold owners and contractors accountable for some crane type accidents. We must continue to protect our workers and laws for everyone’s safety,” explained Mr. Perecman.

Does pinging work anymore?

First, what is pinging? Pinging is when you let the search engines know your site or blog has been updated. Search engine spiders are sent out and new content is noted in the engines. There are several free sites you can “ping” at including Ping-o-Matic, PingMyBlog, and Google.

Most of us are pinging daily without even knowing it, in fact, some web services ping for you like webpress.com. According to Google, you should ping your blog every time updates are made so that search engine spiders can crawl your site and recognize the new content.

For the few minutes it take to ping your blog, it’s worth doing and can only help increase your popularity in the search engines.

5 Interesting Twitter Sites and Tools

Just like email, Twitter is something that I personally cannot live without. For me, Twitter is a way to know what’s going on in the world, discover new things and engage in interesting conversations and ideas. I recently found some interesting sites and tools that the Twitter user would find interesting.

1. Twhirl is a desktop Twitter client that does a lot of things the Twitter site does and more. It’s compatible with Windows and Mac platforms and is based on the Adobe Air platform. You get updates from all your Twitter friends automatically, as well as direct messages and replies. You can even set to get audible notifications every time someone Tweets. There is also a way to shorten your URLs within the client. I use it and I think it’s a great tool compared to the other Twitter clients I’ve tried.
2. Curious about who are as obsessed in using Twitter as you? Go to Twitterholic.com and you’ll be able to see the top users, how many followers and friends they have as well as how many updates. It’s interesting to see that Barack Obama is #1 and has only updated his Twitter feed 84 times. Talk about a big influence!
3. Interested about the 2008 election? Politweets finds Tweets from all over the Twittershphere about all the presidential candidates and syndicates them. There is even a page of each of the candidates with their latest Tweet and links to other information about them.
4. Twitpic is a way to share your pictures to your Twitter friends. All you need to do is log in with your username and password and upload a picture, which will then update your Twitter feed with the link to that picture.
5. TwitThis is a plugin for your blog that you can implement to each blog post to make it easier for other people to link to it on Twitter. All you need to do is log into your Twitter account and the URL will automatically be shortened and placed in your Twitter feed.

An Open Letter to Yahoo and MSN Search Departments

To Whom it May Concern (Qi Lu and Alexander Gounares, et al);


For the fourth quarter of 2007, Google sites brought in excess of $3.12 Billion dollars in revenue. A majority of that I am sure is from Adwords. I am not sure of the revenue generated by your two search departments, but considering Google gets at least 65% of all searches worldwide, I am sure your revenue is significantly less.

There are several reasons why revenue from Adwords is significantly more than your site, but one of the main reasons is advertisers like myself have a tool called Adwords Editor at our disposal to manage our ppc campaigns.

I have discussed the benefits of Adwords Editor on numerous blog posts and yet there has been no similar application launched by either of your departments. Adwords Editor went open to the public on October 13, 2006 that was almost a year and a half ago, since December version 5.0 has been available. In all of this time, you have not been able to at least release a beta test to select advertisers. I understand a while back you were both busy launching Panama and Adcenter, but since then I have not heard much from either of you.

So I am asking, no I am begging either of you to release a beta version of your product within the year (that should be plenty of time). I can guarantee the amount of money my company spend s on your networks will increase Four Fold within a year from that date, and I am willing to bet that numerous other companies will significantly increase your budgets. If you need an individual to alpha test a version, please do not hesitate to contact me, I would be happy to work with you on this essential product.

I anxiously await your responses.

Jeff Novak
Jeff at tengoldenrules dot com

Managing Your Online Reputation

As I was driving to work and listening to NPR, I once again heard a discussion about Eliot Spitzer and his sex scandal that has taken over the news. It got me thinking about online reputation management, and those that engage in it and those who do not. Currently, if you go on Google and search for Governor of New York, half of the results are about how Spitzer was engaged in the scandal and how he resigned from his position yesterday. All of this made me think, is it possible to really manage a reputation online after a controversy like Spitzer?

There are many SEO marketing strategies that suggest how you can manage your online reputation by filling up the front page of Google with fresh content, moving all the negative content to other pages. Some of these ways are by creating your own website, blogging, press releases, creating a squidoo lens, submitting videos to youtube.com, and creating social network profiles such as facebook.com and linkedin.com that can show up in the search results. Then you must engage in a link building strategy to assure these sites will rank well on Google to move the negative feedback to other result pages. These blogs, social profiles and articles provide a new and different view of a story than the one being reported. This content, along with the SEO marketing strategies discussed, can help shape public opinion through the internet.

When it comes to building positive awareness about your brand, product, personality, or public figure, it can take a long time to build a solid identity. Nowadays, for many people the first place they go to information, whether it be about a product or a news story, is one of the major search engines. They rely on the content they find online to keep them up to date, more specifically; they usually rely on the content they find on the first page of that search engine.

A good example of when this strategy would be ideal is for negative comments about a company. For example, if a medium sized public company was losing money because of bad sales or investments, the people who own the stock would read about the bad sales in their financial news, would sell the stock, and the company could eventually go bankrupt. If that company engaged in ways to manage their online reputation, they could provide fresh content to Google about the reasons for their slump, positive things about the company, and why people shouldn't sell their stock. Overtime this would assist in helping to bring their reputation back up.

I pose the following question: While these reputation management strategies are commonly practiced, when a story of such magnitude as the Spitzer scandal gets released, are these ideas practical to attempt to help sway the public's opinion and redeem one's reputation? Probably not. But the point is, online reputation management is vital and should not be overlooked.

Guest Post - Top 10 eBay Stores Tips for Small Business Owners

Here is a guest post from our friend Scott Pooler at All Business Auctions, an eBay stires expert.

Top 10 eBay Stores Tips for Small Business Owners

1) OPEN an eBay store and stock it with merchandise - This is the first step! Once you make this initial step, your business will be on its way towards gaining worldwide exposure for your brand plus a robust and lively new customer base. Question: Are you aware that more searches are initiated for products on eBay each day than on Google? In fact there are more searches completed each day on eBay than on Google’s entire system and every search within eBay is initiated by a consumer looking for a product to buy.

2) Build up your positive feedback number - By building the eBay account feedback through purchases and the sales of your store merchandise new and exciting features of your eBay account will become available. Once your feedback rating exceeds 100 all of your fixed price and store listings will be gaining even more Internet exposure on eBay express and your eBay store merchandise will qualify for many other programs within eBay. When sales exceed $1000.00 per month, the eBay stores business you established will be listed as a PowerSeller. Powerseller status indicates to the consumer that you are a steady and reliable resource and they can have confidence buying from you. Additionally, when your sales surpass $3000.00 per month, your business will qualify for a reduction in PayPal fees. The best sellers rise to the top both in the new Best Match Search and with quality DSR's or "Detailed Seller Ratings" on eBay. Being a great merchant now results in a bottom line discount on fees for Powersellers.

3) Research and Test - Use existing tools provided by companies like Terapeak and Hammertap to research your niche and products on eBay. Study the competition and learn your strengths and weaknesses as a seller on eBay. The world of eBay retailing is dynamic and different from even cutting edge eCommerce marketing. You must have relevant and accurate information at hand to really know the marketplace. Without research and testing (via your eBay store and auctions listings), no real eBay marketing plan can be developed. Use these easy to understand tools to learn the trends, price points, and methods your competition uses to dominate the marketplace for your niche. Research is king on eBay!

4) Design Your eBay Store to fit your brand - An eBay store is a marvelous tool to attract traffic to your merchandise but once a potential customer lands on your site you want them to stick around and see all that you have to offer. A standard eBay store design is very basic and will appear as one of a thousand similar eBay stores in the world. To stand out and be recognized, you need to invest in a professionally designed eBay store. A store designed with your company look and feel and your branding will perform much better than the stock eBay store packages with dated graphics and cookie cutter design.

5) Complete your eBay Store “About Me” Page - This is possibly the single most important step to succeed as an eBay seller! The About Me page is the only place where, within the eBay rules and guidelines it is possible to re-direct eBay traffic to your own website. If you want a portion of the 225 million eBay users to see your company website, this is where you get it done! A professional eBay store design should include a “me” page designed to funnel traffic to your off eBay website.

6) Write an eBay guide, review, or blog - Give your muse a try and write a review or a guide to how to buy a product you feature. What should a consumer look for in products similar to what your store features? How would a consumer go about finding an honest dealer like you? What kind of treasures can be found in the marketplace and how does a consumer tell the good from the fake in your field? This is not a place for blatant merchandising but more of a place to write a common sense guide about how to buy your specific category of widgets. These guides and reviews and/or blog posts are all ways to gain worldwide exposure for your company and your brand and identify yourself as an expert - eBay provides these tools to you for free!

7) Import your eBay listings into your own website - Create excitement on your website and offer ever changing content to the search engines by importing your own eBay store listings into your off eBay traditional website. The advantages of this strategy are vast and the investment is minimal. If you sign up as an affiliate of eBay (also free) your company can even realize revenue from any click through to eBay from your website.

8) Sell Internationally - With an eBay store your company becomes an international exporter overnight. Make your products available to the world and offer them on all of eBay's international websites. You will gain new customers, additional traffic and valuable bidders for any auction listings you post. Bring the world to you with the click of a mouse!

9) Set up a Trade - In / Trade - Up Program for new equipment sales - . Example: Your business sells new and valuable products or merchandise and has a loyal customer base. You are always working toward selling your customers the latest and greatest piece of equipment or new model of your merchandise. As a business owner you hesitate to directly accept trade in equipment and then sell same used equipment for warranty and financial reasons etc… With an established eBay based Trade up program an opportunity becomes available to offer your customers a way to convert used merchandise into trade in cash on eBay if the customer will commit to buying a new stock item from you. In an eBay consignment arrangement, you never take ownership of the item and therefore you never invest in the item nor are you liable for the item. The item is sold as is to a new customer and your loyal customer applies the value towards the sale of your new inventory. Win Win - Everyone is happy. You sell new equipment by eliminating a financial objection from your present customer. - Smart Business!

10) Stick with it! - There are many tools available to your company which will automate the process of listing and re-listing merchandise which reduces labor costs and the possibility of tedium causing you to abandon an eBay store plan. When you set up your eBay store, have an eBay plan in place with goals and milestones in mind and on paper. Stick with your plan, adjust your goals, and learn your marketplace. Each sale will propel your business along the pathway to success and each sale will be a learning experience. Your company and you can do it and you can do it now!

Bonus Tip - eBay is more than a sales channel - eBay is a worlds most highly trafficked intersection of buyers and sellers. Location is everything in the world of retail and if your store is on a busy corner you will be touted as a genius for your selection of a location. Think of eBay more as an advertising opportunity and a brand building marketplace with the added benefit of producing real sales. eBay has spent as much as 4 Billion dollars per year on PPC advertising targeted for goods listed within eBay Stores, do you want a piece of that ad buy? An eBay store can have a long lasting positive impact on brand awareness and new customer acquisition all while providing actual revenue. Top tier retailers including Sears and Circuit City have invested in the eBay marketplace because it is much more than a place for collectibles. Open up to the possibilities of eBay, no other venue provides so much traffic with such a small overall investment.

Scott Pooler is an eZine Articles Expert Author and the Publisher of the "Trading Assistant Journal" . His company - AllBusinessAuctions.com provides eBay stores design, eCommerce development, Internet & eBay solutions & software to small and mid sized businesses worldwide.
727-596-6900

10 Free SEO Tools

In Ten Golden Rules fashion, here are my top 10 FREE SEO Tools that I use and hopefully you will utilize them in your SEO efforts.

TouchGraph – This web tool shows you the different connections between related sites

Spyfu – See what keywords your competitors are aiming for

SEO Digger – This tool helps you identify where a website ranks for key terms

URLTrends – Compare websites and get information on your “WatchList”

Seomoz – Test the strength of your website.

SelfSeo – Great keyword suggestion tool

SEOToolset.com – Checks multiple website activity including server, page source and competition

Compete – This site shows you tracking of your competition by visitors and stats on how they are doing month over month

WebuildWebPages – This is a spider simulator when your website gets crawled by the search engines

Marketleap – Check the link popularity with this easy to use tool

Prevent Visitors from Leaving your Website with a Custom 404 Not Found Error Page

If you spend any time surfing on the internet, I’m sure at some point you have come across a 404 error page, stating that the page you are looking for cannot be found. I personally have come across this error countless times, and I know how frustrating/disappointing this error can be. Many times when visitors request to view a page on your website and see this error, they will leave your website immediately. There are many reasons why you might receive this Not Found error. Some possible reasons for a 404 error page are that the file has been renamed, the file has been deleted or moved to another location, the file cannot be found because of maintenance, or the visitor mistyped part of the url.

To prevent visitors from leaving your website if they happen to come across a 404 error page, you can customize your error page with your own content or make it look and feel like your website. Many websites have a customized 404 error page with either links to other pages of their website or a search box to help the visitor find exactly what they are looking for. Some examples of websites in different industries with customized error pages are Circuitcity.com, Amazon.com, Nordstroms.com, and Searchengineland.com. All of these websites have provided a link back to their homepage or have navigation on their error page that mirrors their site to avoid visitors from leaving.

Besides just using the 404 error page to retain visitors, this is a great search engine optimization tactic. Not only do you not want your visitors to find a Not Found page, but you also don’t want the search engines to find broken links on your site. This can negatively hurt your search engine optimization strategy. In addition, this 404 error page can also be used similarly to a html sitemap page, where you provide keyword rich links to other pages of your website. This is great for the search engines and your visitors!

Twitter...in Plain English

I came across a really cute and interesting video about Twitter explained in plain English. I’m a regular Twitter user, and since I’ve started using it, people that have seen me use it wonder what Twitter is, and why I use it. This video is a great way to explain to them why and how people use it.



I agree with the idea that Twitter is a great way to bring people closer together, and you'll know what your friends are doing. You can also communicate with your Twitter friends by @yourusername followed by the message. This has another become a form of communicating on Twitter, other than private messaging.

I also came across some other videos by the same people that explains other web phenomena such as Wikis, Blogs and RSS, to name a few, in plain English. The next time someone that isn’t familiar with the web or ask you what a Blog, RSS, Wiki or Twitter is, easily send them this video and hopefully they’ll get it.

Google Teleportation

Not many searchers know that if you want to search on google the contents of a specific site you just need to type in "keywords site:url" such as in my example "chuck palahniuk site: amazon.com" Google then only provides search results from amazon.com. Google understands that many individuals forget the specific url of many sites and therefore use Google to search for the url of amazon (its amazon.com in case you did not know). Now as the search result above shows, Google is now showing you a search box within a search result, Google calls this "teleporting." Google found a high amount of more refined searches after general searches (which makes sense and should come as a surprise to know one).
As a way to further control the search and the click, the Google teleportation search box then allows you to search within amazon.com (even using the "site:" search tool) to get the visitor results. Google in the few tests I conducted receives no revenue from teleportation, as no first or second search results had adwords results. The value to Google is to continue providing the best results to searchers, after all Google would much rather have you search for amazon then do a second search of the amazon site from Google, not going to amazon to do their next search. The more searches Google gets the more likely users are to use the Google search engine again. The question is, will Google find a way to monetize this?

Two Brilliant Bald Guys

The latest Six Pixels of Separation Podcast is the best podcast episode I have ever heard.

Mitch Joel, the brilliant host is totally on his game returning from the TED conference totally inspired.

His feature interview with Seth Godin (7 Best Selling Marketing Books no adjectives required for Seth) was simple, clear, concise, marketing brilliance.



Six Pixels musicologist CC Chapman was also on his game with an excellent preview of the new Munk song Beautiful (I Know You're).

Do yourself a favor, subscribe to Six Pixels of Separation over at iTunes, Mitch will no doubt have a bunch more great content from TED in the coming weeks. Thanks Mitch!

The Question of the Day Is...

A couple days ago, Seth Godin's blog featured a thought provoking entry titled "Not a Trick Question".

His question was this "Is it better to make stuff aimed at people who usually buy your product, or aimed at people who rarely do?"

I often find myself asking a variation of this question when it comes to marketing our clients. Although it's vitally important to identify a target you do well with, I often challenge clients to think along the lines of how to reach untapped markets.

It can be as simple as asking, "How can I modify my marketing plan, even if only slightly, to appeal to a different or more broad demographic?" Sometimes it involves an actual change to the product or service, but often it requires only a tweak in messaging to open up new opportunities.

So, which do you pick – the familiar or the untapped? Since Seth was referring to a product, he pointed out you have to pick one or the other. But, when it comes to marketing, you can easily choose to target your messaging to more than one demographic and test to determine effectiveness.