Chinese hackers may have been behind power blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to a report in the National Journal.
The report, penned by Shane Harris for the National Journal, lays out a lengthy case that China has deployed hackers working unofficially and officially for the government and military to probe U.S. infrastructure. That […]
Twitter has answered a burning question in the development community: Will Ruby on Rails stay as it overhauls its infrastructure? The answer: Ruby stays, but Twitter may diversify in some areas.
Ruby on Rails has been tarnished a bit by Twitter’s outages, but in a Q&A on its architecture the company set the record straight on […]
Notable headlines:
Garett Rogers: Google App Engine pricing a disappointment
Ed Bott: Dear Microsoft: Please get UAC right this time
Sunbelt Blog: Microsoft: What we got here is a failure to communicate
Larry Dignan: Dell delivers: Is a turnaround in sight?
Photos: Cracking open the Alienware Area 51 m15x (right)
Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft’s grand plan to eliminate phone numbers
Microsoft looks […]
I’ve been actively blogging for over 5 years now, and by “active” I mean that at one point I generated well over 20 blog entries per day. Original content, too. I was younger, then, and as anyone who’s crossed that magical 40th birthday line understands, I had a heck of a lot more energy in […]
Dell’s fiscal first quarter results topped expectations courtesy of strong growth in its commercial and consumer businesses.
On Thursday, Dell reported net income of $784 million, or 38 cents a share, on revenue of $16.07 billion, which was up 9 percent from a year ago. Wall Street analysts were expecting earnings of 34 cents a share […]
by Mike Moran
I’m old, so I have seen many different battlegrounds come and go in search marketing. Keywords, Links, Content. Multi-media is the one raging now. But which one is next? It could be personalization. It could be mobile. It could also be design.
I hope you were paying attention to this space earlier this week when Jackie Baker expanded on the need for excellent Web design to drive conversions. She’s right. If you missed Jackie’s article, go read it now. (I’ll wait right here for you.)
You might now be convinced of the importance of Web design for your conversions, but I want to talk to you about something else that Web design might help you with—your search traffic.
“Traffic?” you might ask. “How can site design help with getting people to my site if they have to come to my site to see my design?” (OK, you probably didn’t ask that, but just play along.)
Good question. We’re starting to see search engines with features that preview a screen shot of your Web page on the actual search results screens. So, people will see your site design before they click through to your site. If they do, you can bet that it will become a factor in whether they click, just as a title and a snippet are today.
I recently looked at a couple of new “visual” search engines, Viewzi and SearchMe. Both of these search engines show previews of the Web pages in their search results, so you can see the page before you go there. Now, to be honest, I don’t know that search marketers need to spend a lot of time researching new search engines, but you ought to understand something about them, because often the big guys put in features pioneered by smaller competitors.
So, if you are living today off a nice title and an attractive snippet, your Web design might be the next thing you need to focus on to retain your curb appeal. You might get lots of clicks now, but if that thumbnail screen shot looks butt-ugly, then your clicks might one day go down.
Of course, it doesn’t seem very important now, because Google isn’t showing screen previews on its results pages. But there’s a good chance they will start to do so at some point. They might not be scared by SearchMe and Viewzi, but Ask.com already offers preview. Google might already be thinking of adding the same kind of feature—think about how that would change the search marketing game.
Ask’s search result looks a lot like the others, except for that binoculars icon.
Now see what happens when you roll your mouse over the binoculars:
Remember, anything that a searcher can see about your page before the click affects the click. As search engines start to add these innovations, design will become more and more important. If you look like a credible site, you’ll get more clicks. Think about how important design becomes if the thumbnail is shown without any mouse-over required. Then it becomes just as important as the title and the snippet.
You might not think that you need to do anything about this now. After all, why not wait until it happens before bothering to work on it? History shows this to be a mistake.
In the early days of search, some people figured out the idea of keyword optimization faster than others and built up tidy search traffic that lasted a long time. When Google arrived and links became important, those sites that started out with lots of links—before they knew they were important for search—had the advantage over those scrambling to do them later. When people started to understand how deep content gave you advantages in long tail searches, those that were already serving their customers with deep content benefited most. And, most recently, when Universal Search and other multi-media search result pages have come to the fore, companies that had already made investments in images and videos had the edge over those that decided that now it’s finally important.
Design might go the same way. Don’t wait until your search traffic is at risk to wake up and smell the new Web design. (OK, I probably could have done better on that one.) The time to improve your design is before it is a crisis, not after. You’ve always had lots of reasons to have a good design, but your search traffic might soon turn out to be one more.
Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.
by Mike Moran
I’m old, so I have seen many different battlegrounds come and go in search marketing. Keywords, Links, Content. Multi-media is the one raging now. But which one is next? It could be personalization. It could be mobile. It could also be design.
I hope you were paying attention to this space earlier this week when Jackie Baker expanded on the need for excellent Web design to drive conversions. She’s right. If you missed Jackie’s article, go read it now. (I’ll wait right here for you.)
You might now be convinced of the importance of Web design for your conversions, but I want to talk to you about something else that Web design might help you with—your search traffic.
“Traffic?” you might ask. “How can site design help with getting people to my site if they have to come to my site to see my design?” (OK, you probably didn’t ask that, but just play along.)
Good question. We’re starting to see search engines with features that preview a screen shot of your Web page on the actual search results screens. So, people will see your site design before they click through to your site. If they do, you can bet that it will become a factor in whether they click, just as a title and a snippet are today.
I recently looked at a couple of new “visual” search engines, Viewzi and SearchMe. Both of these search engines show previews of the Web pages in their search results, so you can see the page before you go there. Now, to be honest, I don’t know that search marketers need to spend a lot of time researching new search engines, but you ought to understand something about them, because often the big guys put in features pioneered by smaller competitors.
So, if you are living today off a nice title and an attractive snippet, your Web design might be the next thing you need to focus on to retain your curb appeal. You might get lots of clicks now, but if that thumbnail screen shot looks butt-ugly, then your clicks might one day go down.
Of course, it doesn’t seem very important now, because Google isn’t showing screen previews on its results pages. But there’s a good chance they will start to do so at some point. They might not be scared by SearchMe and Viewzi, but Ask.com already offers preview. Google might already be thinking of adding the same kind of feature—think about how that would change the search marketing game.
Ask’s search result looks a lot like the others, except for that binoculars icon.
Now see what happens when you roll your mouse over the binoculars:
Remember, anything that a searcher can see about your page before the click affects the click. As search engines start to add these innovations, design will become more and more important. If you look like a credible site, you’ll get more clicks. Think about how important design becomes if the thumbnail is shown without any mouse-over required. Then it becomes just as important as the title and the snippet.
You might not think that you need to do anything about this now. After all, why not wait until it happens before bothering to work on it? History shows this to be a mistake.
In the early days of search, some people figured out the idea of keyword optimization faster than others and built up tidy search traffic that lasted a long time. When Google arrived and links became important, those sites that started out with lots of links—before they knew they were important for search—had the advantage over those scrambling to do them later. When people started to understand how deep content gave you advantages in long tail searches, those that were already serving their customers with deep content benefited most. And, most recently, when Universal Search and other multi-media search result pages have come to the fore, companies that had already made investments in images and videos had the edge over those that decided that now it’s finally important.
Design might go the same way. Don’t wait until your search traffic is at risk to wake up and smell the new Web design. (OK, I probably could have done better on that one.) The time to improve your design is before it is a crisis, not after. You’ve always had lots of reasons to have a good design, but your search traffic might soon turn out to be one more.
Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.
Run don’t walk to read Jim Louderback’s account of how Revision3 was taken down by MediaDefender, a subsidiary of penny stock ArtistDirect.
The gist: Revision3 suffered a denial of service attack that was orchestrated by MediaDefender. Louderback’s well-told tale has all the details, but we’ll pick it up here:
So I picked up the phone and tried […]
Comcast’s portal had its DNS records hi-jacked in an attack. The big question: Was Comcast just a big target or was this a BitTorrent revenge attack as some folks have speculated?
If you recall, Comcast had drawn some fire over traffic shaping on its network and curtailing peer-to-peer services. It’s pretty easy to connect this hack […]
by Stoney deGeyter
I remember when favicons first started to appear, it was like, hey, how cool is that. But now they are so common that I hardly notice them anymore. Well, no, that’s not exactly true. I do notice them, and like them, it’s just that I’m not surprised to see them anymore. But I AM surprised when I don’t see them.
Ok, let’s back up. What is a favicon?
If you’re reading this post on Search Engine Guide, rather than a feed reader, then you need to do no more than look up to the address bar. Here is an example of the favicon used on my company blog:
See that little icon of EMP with the orange line above it? Yep, that’s the favicon. It’s such a little thing, but it can make a pretty big impact. Site’s that don’t have a favicon show a generic icon like this:
That’s in FireFox. In Internet Explorer, if you don’t brand yourself with a custom favicon, Microsoft with brand themselves in your place. Here’s what it looks like:
Now I won’t go so far as to suggest the favicon will increase sales, but it does provide a nice visual cue for your site, especially once it gets added into a visitor’s bookmarks folder. Take a look at this snapshot of Netflix open up in my browser, along site my open bookmarks:
Look down at the very bottom, see the icon circled in red? That little guy there is a bookmark from a site that has no favicon. So you can see that not having a favicon prevents you from standing out among the others. This can be important when you’re bookmarked a list of your competitors!
Favicons are not that difficult to create. I found this great Photoshop Tutorial on How to Create a Favicon.
In a matter of minutes I created an entirely new favicon:
Granted, this new one took me all of 5 minutes to create from the site logo, but what do you think? I could definitely clean it up a bit, for sure. But not bad for a few minutes of work.
To add your new favicon so it appears in the location bar and bookmarks, in the <head> tags of each page’s code add this:
<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON" HREF="favicon.ico">
That’s it. You’re all set with your new favicon.
Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.