PlanWebs Web Design, Online Media & Marketing

Future Now
If your Web site is struggling and you don’t have the time or cash to hire a search firm, then the Future Now team has some Web site optimization tips you can start implementing as soon as possible.

You’ll need to get a testing platform, like Google Website Optimizer and run a simple split A/B test. Since your site is struggling with low traffic, avoid multivariate testing, as the time it would take to generate enough traffic to gauge the success of multiple combinations of on-page factors could be too prohibitive.

Don’t make any judgments until the test is finished and you have statistically significant results. Basing your choice of one headline or call to action on incomplete data is a surefire way to waste your time and delay success. Meanwhile, supplement your test by driving traffic through PPC buys.

Solo SEO
“Your customers use online reviews to decide where to eat, shop, and do business. The feedback and ratings your customers give also help determine your rankings for your keywords.”

That’s the message that greets small business owners on the sign-up page for LeaveFeedback.org, a new free service from Utah-based search firm Solo SEO. The review generation service makes it easy for business owners to accumulate reviews on sites like Yahoo and Google Local and Yelp, get them ranked and even provide customers with an incentive for writing the review.

At LeaveFeedback.org, reviewers are taken directly to one of the business owner’s chosen review sites, and they get a printable coupon (created by the owner, but hosted on the site) once they’ve posted a review. There are quick links to the popular local search engines and directories so that business owners can get their company listed first, and the service also keeps track of how many times a coupon code was entered. Local search pros like Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee and Miriam Ellis helped contribute to the project’s development through feedback and testing.

Link Building Best Practices
It’s not. So if the consultant you’ve hired to help out with your link-building strategy is focused on buying links, then you’ll need to stop sending the checks.

“Outsourcing isn’t about buying links at all,” says the Vertical Measures team. It means handing your link-building strategy over to someone (or a company) that will do “in-depth research about your industry, your competition and your company so that they can create dynamic links that aren’t purchased. They’ll be doing the kind of interactive link building that creates real buzz in your industry.”

The right link-building team will likely include an industry researcher and a copywriter that can work together to find and generate great content that other Web site owners will want to link to. They won’t do things like rent links from other Web sites or buy reviews.

SEO Roundtable
Once a Web site has been pulled from the search engine indexes, business will likely grind to a halt–even if the company behind the site has significant brand equity. Recovering fast is key to avoid a massive loss of revenue, particularly for e-tailers, so Tamar Weinberg enlisted the help of the SEO Roundtable community to offer some tips for getting re-indexed.

First, make sure your robots.txt file is being used correctly, as it could be denying the engines’ spiders entry. Also, try using Google Webmaster Tools to check for any red flags, and run a link analysis tool like Xenu to see if there’s a problem on with in- or outbound links.

One reader’s suggestion was to “Check the code for broken HTML elements that might accidentally mask indexable content,” as there may just be a problem with the way the site’s information is being displayed. “Make sure you’re not buying or selling links,” said another forum member.

SEO Space
Seems like the perfect solution to the inbound links problem, doesn’t it? After all, microsites will be relevant and somewhat authoritative, and there won’t be any worries about link-buying penalties. Not so fast, says Jody Nimetz. “The best thing to keep in mind when building your external link inventory is to do it in a natural manner. This means not trying to artificially inflate your link inventory.”

The overall quality of your inbound links–no matter where they’re from–is more important than the quantity. A glut of irrelevant, spammy or otherwise low quality links will actually do more harm than good. So if you’re thinking of going the microsite route, be sure to start with a solid strategy.

Ask yourself how the sites will benefit your target audience, how many there will be, and most importantly–whether you’re just building them to obtain links. “Don’t just build sites for the purpose of linking,” Nimetz says. “Ensure that the sites provide value to the user.”

The Economist
Social networking is definitely the next big thing, but it’s not necessarily the next big moneymaker. Like Web-based email before it, social networking will evolve as a feature tied to the Web portal experience. However, like email, it’s not (really) a business.

Meanwhile, as media companies bid up the value of social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo, the industry is still searching for a suitable revenue model. Recently, Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that “social networking inventory as a whole”–which includes its own offering, Orkut, as well as a search advertising deal with News Corp.’s MySpace–was performing worse than expected. Facebook has done even worse. The company recently admitted that it “simply did a bad job” with Beacon, an advertising program that tracks online activity and informs users of their friends’ purchases or actions taken on third-party sites.

The bigger question is whether users should really have to visit a specific Web site to make use of those connections. As Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said in a recent report, “We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” because social media services “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.”

ADOBE ON WEDNESDAY LAUNCHED DIGITAL rights management for the Flash Web plug-in that powers most online video. Competing products such as Apple’s QuickTime and Microsoft’s Windows Media Player both include digital rights protection.

Because Flash has been used mainly for streaming rather than downloading video, that limitation hasn’t been a big issue. But the new Adobe media player set to launch next month will let users download Flash files to the desktop, according to the Beet.TV blog.

Separately, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said Tuesday that the company will develop a new version of Flash specifically tailored to the iPhone. Last month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was reported as saying Adobe’s mobile version of Flash hadn’t been adopted for the iPhone because of performance and technical issues.

–Mark Walsh

by Mark Walsh
Bullish financial projections released by Yahoo Tuesday could lead Microsoft to boost its original $44.6 billion bid for the Web portal, according to Internet analysts. That was certainly Yahoo’s intention in disclosing a plan detailing Yahoo’s financial and strategic goals–initially presented to investors in December 2007–to back up its claim that Microsoft’s proposed offer “substantially undervalues” the company.

Silicon Alley Insider
Six search firms — SearchIgnite, Clickable, iCrossing, Covario, Range Online Media and IPG’s Initiative — held a conference call with Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney last week, to talk about advertiser spending and search trends in Q1. The goal was to help gauge what impact, if any, the economic downturn was having on the search industry. Henry Blodget says that it’s a glass half- empty/half-full forecast.

The firms generally agreed that search advertising trends remain strong. “Search volumes remain robust, and advertising clients continue to shift greater share of ad budgets to search,” Blodget said. Still, the group “appeared to acknowledge some search-spending weakness.”

CNET News
After years of standing on opposite sides of the click fraud fence, Yahoo and Click Forensics have partnered to help tackle the issue for Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers. As Elinor Mills notes, “There have been calls for an independent third party to oversee the business, but advertisers don’t want to give up their server data to search engines and vice versa. The Yahoo-Click Forensics relationship seems like a step in that direction.”

While neither company has detailed exactly what click info they’ll be sharing, both Tom Cuthbert, CEO of Click Forensics, and Reggie Davis, Yahoo’s click quality czar, said that the goal is to come up with a “better consensus click fraud rate than the widely disparate figures now being reported, and to make advertisers more confident in the system,” Mills says.