Blog•
on February 28th, 2011•
If you are still under the illusion that you are not leaving a trace on the Internet, think again. It’s likely that most of what you post, browse, and search for is being captured somewhere. That includes photos you removed, Tweets you deleted, and Facebook updates you undid immediately. The rule I’ve always heard is if you don’t want your grandchildren to see it some day, don’t post it. Or even better, don’t do it in the first place.
Did you happen to see the advertisement during the Super Bowl where the guy is told he cc’d a number of people on an email. To stop the recipients from reading this email, the guy doesn’t try to “unsend” the email electronically, but rather finds every recipient and destroys their email device. It’s a funny ad and even funnier because that email would live on a server and be accessible and number of other ways.
Did you know that people can now search your email address and find out information about you? You can do it yourself, no special club or handshake needed. Rapleaf allows companies to gather information about their customers by submitting their email to Rapleaf. Rapleaf then sends back age, location, and interests based upon that email address. It’s a great way for companies to segment their marketing approach, and a little scary at the same time.
Blog•
on February 28th, 2011•
I’ve been keeping a close eye on changes that Google has been making as a result to some recent news coverage.
On February 12th, the NY Times released an article that described how JC Penney’s had been tricking Google’s ranking system by ranking #1 for a number of keywords it should have never ranked for. I knew after this article that Google would have more of an incentive to find companies using black hat techniques, or techniques frowned upon by Google. Sure enough, Google enacted some changes last week and this past weekend offered the first glimpse into the effect of these changes.
This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that these changes had indeed affected a number of companies. According to the article, Google is attempting to remove website pages that contain a few keywords and a ton of advertisements.
Google has a high incentive to display the best results per search. If they don’t, searchers go elsewhere and Google loses advertising money.
So, what do you do as a site owner who wants to build their status in Google? Backlinking is still a very important part of high rankings in Google. So, how do you get good links?
From what I understand, here are the scenarios in which linking is legitimate:
- When it has actually been requested that the other website add the link.
- That you don’t purchase hundreds of your own websites and then load them with links.
But, the best tried and true way to get back links is to have great, compelling content that people WANT to link to. That should be the first part of your linking strategy.
Blog•
on February 25th, 2011•
I do a lot of editing to individual PHP page templates within WordPress. Oftentimes, there is a great shortcode that I want to add within the page design. Here is the code to insert so you can do that. Add this php code within the page template.
<?php echo do_shortcode("[Shortcode]"); ?>
Replace ‘Shortcode’ with the specific shortcode you wish to use.
Blog•
on February 22nd, 2011•
If you are trying to implement Really Simple Sitemap on your WordPress blog, it does not work. You can use this plugin instead:
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/
This creates an actual sitemap on one of your website pages.
If you are looking for an XML Sitemap Generator for Google, here is my plugin of choice:
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/
Blog•
on February 14th, 2011•
When you embed a YouTube video on your website, you likely don’t want people to watch related videos that are not from your company or organization after they finish watching your video.
There is an easy way to remove this feature.
If you embed a YouTube video, it will look something like this:
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="600" height="400" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ABCDEFGHI12" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
All you need to do is add this to the end of the src URL:
?rel=0
So, the final code in this case would be:
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="600" height="400" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ABCDEFGHI12?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Blog•
on February 9th, 2011•
I’m currently working on a project where the client asked me to hide some of the content for a few months. I’m using WordPress and am adding content to the pages through the WordPress HTML text editor. I’ve already included the content on the site and don’t want to delete it. I just want to hide it.
After searching around for a while, I found a way to do it.
First, download the Exec-PHP plugin. This will allow you to add PHP code to your HTML editor.
Second, add the following code around the content you wish to hide (the content text below):
<?php /*
content
*/?>
Now, whatever is in between the PHP tags will be hidden from the live website while remaining in your WordPress CMS editor.
Blog•
on February 7th, 2011•
I am a big fan of GoDaddy for their services and customer support. I have used GoDaddy since 2008 and have a number of domains and hosting arrangements with the company. They have been a great service provider and I have had fewer problems with GoDaddy than with other service providers.
But I am very disappointed in their advertising. In fact, I’m embarrassed because I recommend GoDaddy to nearly all of my clients. As their customer, I am in essence paying for their ads. At least I can rest assured that they are not paying an advertising agency a ridiculous sum of money. Or at least I hope not. Because it doesn’t take an ad agency to say “Hmm, let’s feature half-naked women. That sells well.” A 5 year old could recommend that.
Look at companies like Chick-Fil-A. They found a group (cows) who have a vested interest in their product. Humor is at the forefront of every advertisement. And Chick-Fil-A has been riding on this idea for years. It has been a huge success that took thought and creativity.
Any moron can put a half-naked girl on an ad. Beer companies have been doing it forever. It works. Sex sells. But the GoDaddy ads just don’t even make sense. Are you all of a sudden going to get hot ladies if you purchase a domain name? The ads don’t tell what the company does at all.
GoDaddy is a company offering intelligent products and services. Maybe they could figure out how to create complimentary advertisements.
Blog•
on February 3rd, 2011•
Have you seen one of these codes lately? Do you know what it is?
It’s called a QR Code and it’s becoming popular quickly. It’s basically a barcode that includes whatever information you would like it to contain. For instance, you can send a message or include a link within these barcodes.
So how can you read the barcode? Most smartphones have a number of apps available to read these. I just downloaded the free app ‘i-nigma 4‘ that is specific to the iPhone 4. This app turns your phone into a barcode reader using the camera. Once the barcode is read (which happens immediately), you are either shown the message or directed to the website.
Here is a simple website where you can create one of these barcodes – http://createqrcode.appspot.com/
The way you can use this is to create a barcode and then put it on your business card, promotional material, or even on your website. This is a great solution if you have a website URL that is hard to remember. Now, you can just place the image of the QR Code on promotional material and people can be led directly to the page.
Test the QR Code shown above and see where it leads you!
Blog•
on February 3rd, 2011•
I’ve been telling a number of my clients that 2011 needs to be the year of the video for their websites. I just heard recently that 52% of searches are now for videos. YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. I personally prefer to watch a 60 second video clip instead of reading a page of content.
So how do you begin to incorporate video into your website? Here are a few ideas:
- Home page highlight video of what your company/organization does. (keep within 30-90 seconds)
- Add a video at the top of your most popular pages. You can keep the text below it, but have a video up top. For example, have a video about you on your about page. A well-done video of you describing yourself and your business will say a lot more than static text.
- Use videos for teaching purposes. There are a number of screen capture software solutions where you can capture a video of how to do something on your computer. These can then be added as videos on your website.
Once the video has been created, how should you add it to your website? My recommendation is to use YouTube or Vimeo. If you upload your video to one of these services, you can then embed the video right on your website page. Then, the video will not only be on your website but will also be added to the millions of videos online and will be searchable within the search engines.
Additionally, YouTube is a video format that works on mobile devices such as the iPhone. Vimeo also has this capability, but you have to pay to have your videos work on mobile devices. YouTube is the better option for search engines and playability, but I like how Vimeo looks. It is much cleaner.
In the videos you make, be real. If you are the CEO of a plumbing service, don’t get in front of a video camera in a suit and tie and talk about your business. Show your plumbing crew and how they handle problems. People don’t want a CEO to fix their toilet, they want a plumber. If you can add humor, do it wisely. And in all videos, put your potential client first. Don’t make a video of what you would want to see. Make a video that would entice your potential client.
Blog•
on February 2nd, 2011•
I experienced a rude awakening when recently completing my taxes for 2010. The entire past year, I have been noticing announcements on the Mint.com website that Mint & TurboTax had teamed up. Heck, they are both owned by Intuit. So, teamed up, owned by the same company – forgive me, but I assumed that you would be able to import transactions tagged a certain way into that specific area within TurboTax.
But it turns out that is not the case. The two finance solutions don’t talk to each other. I had spent the last year notating and tagging every transaction for easy importation into TurboTax. But you can’t import relevant information from Mint into TurboTax.
I mean, how hard is this? Every blog program uses a system of tags so that you can easily find blogs about certain topics. Why can’t my tags in Mint act as the same way? Why can’t I pull up all transactions I so diligently tagged as ‘Tax Deductible’ throughout the year and import those into TurboTax? Why can’t I pull up all transactions tagged as ‘Mortgage’ related for that particular section?
In my mind, this amounts to false advertising. I’ve checked out a few other comments online and I’m not the only one who assumed by the advertising that TurboTax and Mint would be able to talk to each other. Not true.
To be fair, being diligent with my finances in Mint did allow me to pull transactions tagged under certain topics. But, I used to keep good records in Excel and could have done the same thing that way.
I do think (or at least hope) future versions of Mint and TurboTax can talk to each other. It would make tax season truly easier, as they so ardently advertise.
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