Last week was much anticipated for me, not only did the NHL hockey playoffs start (with my favorite team the Edmonton Oilers taking on the Detroit Red Wings), but Google Sitemaps also rolled out some new features. (Strange that the two get me equally excited.)
I have used Google Sitemaps pretty much since it was released. The one thing that irked me with the application was the verification process, so I'm pleased to see that Google has listened to some feedback and now offers an alternate method of verification that uses a meta tag on the root page of your site. According to the Webmaster Help Center on Google's site, the process is relatively simple:
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents, that gives both web site developers and users more control over how pages are displayed.
The following article gives you five reasons why you should use Cascading Style Sheets.
April has been a tough month. At last count, I've been in 9 different cities (not including my home), a ski resort, on 4 different airlines for a total of two dozen flights and connections, in 8 different hotels, at 6 different shows, and have also packed in assorted client and organizational meetings. I've been spending more time with search marketers than my family, and that can't be a good thing. As lovely as Anne Kennedy, Greg Jarboe, Kevin Lee and Dana Todd are, I'm pretty sure we're not related in any way. And I actually had to nix at least two shows from the agenda. It could have been worse!
Anti-Google sentiment is on the rise. Web pundits have tossed around monopoly theories and privacy advocates have warned of a day of reckoning. While Google has made friends on Wallstreet, it has disappointed the technical evangelists who were once its fiercest followers. Google has grown into a big scary company and web watchers are expressing their concerns about the information Google gleans from their various services.
Google Analytics is free, no one can beat the price, but what is the real cost? The cost is your data. While not terribly important when analyzed alone, when aggregated with other information Google has access to, it could be damaging. Data mining has made the collection of data meaningful. It has become easier to find patterns and trends in large volumes of data.
In the PubCon Publishers Search and Marketing Conferences in Boston, Google's Matt Cutts revealed interesting information about Mediabot and how it could influence your Google rankings.
Distributing a press release to editors and news organizations is only half the battle. Writing a press release that will be published by the media is equally important. Press releases are public relations opportunities. A well written press release, can generate exposure in publications that could be worth thousands in advertising dollars, for a fraction of the cost.
On April 5, fellow Search Insider Max Kalehoff wrote about the likelihood of search continuing to be dominated by three players. Max, very convincingly, argued that our search activity could fragment over a number of properties, some of them vertical engines that offer more functionality, some of them alternative online properties, like social networking sites.
As search becomes an increasingly important online staple, I believe the question of where all that activity will take place also takes on increased importance. For that reason, I'd like to play devil's advocate (in this case, the devil being the established search players, Google, Yahoo and MSN) and offer some reasons why we might continue to consolidate our search activity on these familiar partners.
Budget, especially for smaller organizations, is often a major factor when researching which Analytics package to implement on a given website. There are business owners who continually push off the purchase of analytics until their company is financially ready to make the leap and online commitment; or until over inflated marketing projections prove to be just that, and mistakes need to be quantified. Something that the majority of business doesn't seem to realize is the immense insight and knowledge they are missing out on by waiting.
It's the same old argument: spend a dollar today or two dollars tomorrow. Put that simply, the answer seems obvious; yet everyday, another person throws his hat into the e-commerce ring, purely on the speculation of Google-like fortunes, some great M&A buy-out, or that mythical IPO of triple digit shares, without considering the concept of 'checks and balances'. Having analytics on your site is something that doesn't take long to pay itself off. In fact, I'm pretty confident in saying that by delaying implementation, you''re probably losing more money through your site in lost revenue opportunities than you''re "saving" by putting it off. So smarten up, and start paying attention.
Every organization needs them, has them, and measures them. Or do they?
No matter what your industry, competitive marketplace, or target market, the only way to assure success is to make informed decisions from quantifiable data. The stronger the data, the more likely you will make the right decision. So what is the 'them' that I am referring to above? Key Performance Indicators.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are what separate the 'winners' from the 'try agains;' and knowing not only what to measure, but also how to measure it and what it all means, is what separates and defines levels of success.
Are your search engine rankings still yours? Other people might hijack your search engine rankings and they might steal your web site visitors. The worst thing is that you might not even notice it.