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Top 10 Firefox Browser Plugins

Oct
12
2009

About a year ago I fired Internet Explorer as my primary browser. Why? Because it crashed on me constantly and took forever at times to transition from one site to another. I’ve found the Firefox browser much more user friendly, especially given the number of plugins that have been developed for the browser.

The ability to customize Firefox with these plug-in extensions is what makes this open-source browser so special. However, there are so many available options for plugins, it’s tough to know what’s worth installing and what will be a complete waste of your time.

There are lists of Firefox plugins that have been created citing the best extensions for web developers or for a better YouTube experience. However, I wanted to create an everyday list of my best choices just for the ordinary online business owner.

Out of these, here are my top 10 Firefox extensions:

1. Adblock Plus. If you have ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on a site that often take longer to download than everything else on the page, install Adblock Plus and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock” from the context menu, and the banner won’t be downloaded again.

2. Colorful Tabs. This simple add-on makes a strong colorful appeal. It sets each tab to a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface. After a long day of research when you have lots of browser windows open, this makes online page viewing easier on the eyes.

3. ColorZilla. ColorZilla puts an eyedropper icon in your status bar. Click it and you’ll get a crosshair cursor. As you run this over a Web page, the RGB values of the pixel under the crosshair will display in the status bar, both as three separate values and as a hex value (e.g., R:255, G:255, B:255 | #FFFFFF). I use this all the time if I’m trying to match colors; i.e. a font color to an the primary background on an image, for example.

4. GMail Manager. This Gmail notifier is great if you have multiple Gmail accounts. It allows you to receive new mail notifications along with viewing account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.

5. MeasureIt. After installing this extension, you’ll have a small ruler icon on the left side of your status bar. When you click on it, your browser window will fade out a little, and you’ll have a crosshair cursor. Drag the cursor over a section of the screen that you want to measure. Next to the box is its height and width, measured in pixels. I use this all the time when trying to measure the size of images. When you’re finished, just hit the Escape key to turn it off and return to normal viewing of the page.

6. Quirk Search Status. Search Status allows you to see how any web site you visit is performing. When you land on a page, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google and Linkscape), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa and Compete), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy. I use this all the time to determine whether a site has enough traffic to warrant accepting a joint venture proposal.

7. Scrapbook. ScrapBook helps you to save Web pages and easily manage your saved collections. Major features are: saving web pages or snippets of a page, saving a web site, organizing the collection in the same way you do bookmarks, full text search and quick filtering search of the collection, and editing of your collected pages.

8. Session Manager. Session Manager helps you manage your Firefox tabs. If you visit the same sites every day, all you need do is open all the sites in separate tabs and/or windows, and then use Session Manager to save the session with a distinct name. Then, you simply go to Tools > Session Manager, pick your session, and all the windows and tabs open up just as you saved them. And, Session Manager tracks your sessions as you surf, and if Firefox (or your system) crashes, you can recover the selection of tabs you had open when it crashed.

9. Tabs Open Relative. Tabs Open Relative makes all new tabs open to the right of the current tab, rather than at the far right of the tab bar. This reduced a huge annoyance I had with how the Firefox browser worked.

10. XMarks. XMarks (formerly Foxmarks) provides seamless bookmark synchronization between your computers and browsers via their synchronization server. Your bookmark (and optionally password) data is securely stored and backed up on their servers and is available online, as well. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync across all of your computers. Secure Password Sync is an optional Xmarks feature.

Note: To locate these, search for the plug-in extensions here: addons.mozilla.org

If you don’t currently use Firefox as your browser, perhaps this list will convince you to give it a try. I have liked my experience so much with Firefox that I won’t ever use any other browser.

About The Author
Online Business Coach and Internet Marketing Strategist Donna Gunter helps service business owners automate their Internet marketing. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to improve your visibility and get found online by claiming your Free gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketíng Toolkit, at: TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com

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SysAdmin Facing Cyber Extortion Charges

Dec
22
2008

Sooner or later, it looks like we may have to either rename this site or start a new one called “System Administrators Behaving Badly.”

The latest piece of news to fit this category concerns a laid-off sysadmin who was arrested after allegedly trying to squeeze more money from his former employer.

According to Sharon Gaudin, the sysadmin is accused of threatening Third Avenue Management’s servers with damage if his severance pay wasn’t increased. She reports, “Viktor Savtyrev, a 29-year-old New Jersey resident, also demanded extended medical coverage and ‘excellent’ job references in e-mails and phone calls to officials at the firm.”

All that is pretty much considered illegal. Hence Savtyrev’s arrest and, perhaps because Third Avenue Management is located in a different state (New York), the involvement of an assistant U.S. attorney.

On the bright side, at least this situation didn’t become as ugly as the one involving Jing Hua Wu and three other individuals.

On the less bright side, as the economy continues to wallow about and/or get worse, problems like this are likely to crop up more often.

Savtyrev should plead not guilty, in case you’re curious. The sysadmin’s lawyer told Gaudin he “had no ability or intention to carry out anything. You have someone who got laid off and was under a great deal of financial and emotional stress.”

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About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

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Increase Search Engine Traffic With Quality Content

Jun
27
2007

Every web site owner wants to íncrease search engine traffíc. It’s free and the visitor is targeted to your subject matter, product or service. What more could you ask for in search engine traffíc? The downside is that you need to understand search engine ranking methods and that is quite a challenge for many.
The number of opinions and “experts” on ways to íncrease search engine traffíc is overwhelming. And regardless of what anyone might tell you, they’re all guessing. The search engines themselves don’t divulge how their methods work for one simple reason. As soon as anyone figures out the method, there’s a mad rush to implement changes based on the method.

In a perfect world, where there were no scoundrels, this might not be a factor. Everyone would organize their web site information so that a visitor could easily find what they are looking for, and life would be good. But we certainly don’t live in a perfect world and scoundrels are everywhere.

So we are at the mercy of the search engines to help us sort through the clutter to find what we want. And that’s the value that the search engines provide, accurate and meaningful search engine results that are related to the search terms or phrases. So it goes back to the quality of content, that’s the only common factor in all 3 major search engines’ ranking methods.

Each of the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) search engines use a little different method and technology to arrive at any given web site’s ranking under specific search terms. As mentioned above, no one knows exactly how each method works. But you can test different strategies and methods to see how they impact your rank.

And therein lies the only true method of determining what the search engines might look for when ranking your web page on specific search terms. I’m sure most of us are aware that most processes can be expressed in mathematical equations. I’m not sure if that’s the best method for search engine ranking, but it is the most popular for the search engine ranking process.

And consider the fact that when someone has determined (or thinks they have determined) one of the factors used in search engine rankings they beat it to death. Every discovered aspect in the past few years has been exploited immediately to the point of the search engines abandoning the tactic. As soon as the search engines see that someone can beat the system, they change it.

That’s one of the big reasons you see constant change in ranking methods. Since there is a tremendous amount of revenue at stake for all concerned, i.e. sales of products and services for the web site owners, plus the advertising revenue for the search engines, any advantage is huge.

If you would have tested and tracked all the changes and methods in search engine rankings for the past few years, one constant factor would stand out. This is also one of the most misunderstood and often overlooked elements in search engine ranking for a specific term.

So what’s the one thing that the search engines can’t change about their mathematical algorithms? You got it, CONTENT! The search engines can play with the process, methods, or means to judge web site content. But, if web site owners stick to the basic philosophy of providing meaningful content, in relation to the search term, the impact of changes are far less, if even felt.

And that is where many web site owners run afoul of getting good search engine rankings. Many jump on the bandwagon with every new revelation in search engine strategies based on the latest changes. It’s the old forest and trees scenario, Internet style. Even if you get a slight advantage from all these “new” tactics, it will be short lived. As soon as the search engines catch on that you are working the system, they will change the system.

So the best way to íncrease your rankings for a particular search term is to provide meaningful information or content based on that search term. Here a few guidelines I’ve found that help:

Make sure you focus on the subject matter (don’t try to satisfy too many terms with one web page).

Get inside the searcher’s head – figure out what they want and give it to them.

Be specific and provide details – don’t generalize and be descriptive.

For a sales page use benefits and features to fully explain the problem and the solution.

Update your information often – setup a schedule to update and add more content.
There are many sub factors that can have an impact on how well the search engine bots can determine the value of the content. The search engine bots are software programs that go out and “read” your web page and then provide the information to rank your web pages on what they discovered.

You’ll find many “experts” who will give you a hard líst of items and how to present this information. And I don’t disagree with suggestions to include the search term in your web page in key areas like title, description, and font designations like H1. That helps the search engine software bots to determine the content.

But I’ve seen web pages with no meta-tags, title, or description but that had rock solid content and still had high search engine rankings on a particular search term. So make it easy for the search engines, but always remember that the content is the single consistent factor in search engine rankings.

There are a lot of different aspects to consider when trying to improve your search engine ranking, and íncrease search engine traffíc. The keyword and phrase research, interpreting the search term or phrase to provide the best result, reviewing other popular web sites with the same intentions, linking to other like content web sites, and more. How you present the information and content is also an important issue.

But all those factors come after good content. So if you start with providing the best content, you can’t go wrong. After all, this is both an art and a science, not to mention a moving target. If you would like to learn more, please visit our other article links below.

About The Author
Visit jd WebWorks, to see some recent case studies and get better results with SEO Web Site Design,

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Making Sense Of Website Statistics

Jun
25
2007

Every website owner wants lots of traffíc directed to their website, but this can sometimes involve spending a lot of time and monëy. Fortunately, most website owners can íncrease their return on ínvestment simply by paying closer attention to their website log files. Most website hostíng companies have special software installed that will process these website log files and display the information in an easy to read format. From this information website owners can get an understanding as to how many people are visiting the website, where the visitors are coming from, where they are entering and exiting the website, the average number of page views per visit, and many more interesting facts. These statistics will allow you to better analyze the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and give you some insight as to how you can tweak your website to íncrease your return on ínvestment.

“Hits” Explained

There seems to be some confusion regarding the terms used to describe website visitor traffíc. We usually hear website owners speak in terms of “hits” to their website. Hits don’t accurately describe the number of visitors viewing the website – they are actually just any sort of HTTP request made to your server. Not only are requests made for website pages, but also for all the images and other files associated with viewing a single page. Therefore, one page view could actually result in dozens of hits, and, if a single user visits many pages on your website, this visit could generate hundreds or even thousands of hits. This can excite some website owners, but this number is not a reliable indicator of how many people have actually visited the website.

The term that website owners want to focus on is the amount of unique impressions that are generated by their website. A unique impression will measure the number of actual people visiting the website based on their IP address, browser, and operating system. No matter how many “hits” a visitor registers on your website, the server will record the session as one unique visit. Thus, the number of unique visits gives us a much better idea of the amount of traffíc the website is generating.

What to Look for When Analyzing Website Traffíc

Number of Unique Visitors: We’ve already determined that the best measure of true website traffíc is the number of unique visitors. What we want to look for is a trend in the average number of unique visitors. On a day to day basis, there may be a good amount of volatility in the number of unique visitors, but we want to pay attention to the trend of the average number of visitors per month. Optimally, we’d like to have the number íncrease on a monthly basis.

Entry Page Statistics: From these statistics we can learn which page people are using to enter your website. Most visitors will enter from your home page, but you may notice that up to 50% of your website traffíc originates from a page other than your home page. It’s important that your website have an easy to use navigation structure to ensure that visitors can find the information they are looking for, even if they don’t enter through your website’s main page.

Bounce Rate: The bounce rate can be defined as the percentage of people who visit your website and immediately leave. Don’t get worried if your bounce rate is high – most websites have a bounce rate of about 50% or so. If the bounce rate is unusually high, you can experiment with your website to try and retain more visitors. Maybe you need more enticing graphics, less text, faster loading pages, or a more engaging design.

Exit Page Statistics: These statistics will show you where people are leaving your website. When you know which page is losing the bulk of your website’s visitors you can experiment with some changes in an attempt to retain more visitors.

Average Time & Page Views Per Visit: Website visitors are very goal oriented and task driven. Upon visiting your website, most visitors will merely scan the page to quickly determine whether or not it contains the information they are searching for. By analyzing the average amount of time spent on your website and the average number of page views per visit, you can determine how engaging your website’s content is. The key to retaining visitors and increasing the number of page views is to have relevant and interesting information on your website. Remember – content is king!

Top Referring URLs: This statistic lets you know where the bulk of your website’s traffíc is coming from. This is important if you’re pursuing a website marketing campaign or search engine optimization campaign because you can easily judge the campaign’s effectiveness by looking to see how many visitors each marketing method is generating.

Top Search Words & Phrases: This information will let you know which keywords and phrases visitors are searching for in Google and the other search engines in order to find your website. With this information you can gauge the effectiveness of a search engine optimization campaign, or get an idea of how your website’s keyword density should be altered to position it for the keywords and phrases that you’re targeting.

Browsers, Platforms & Screen Sizes: This information gives us some insight as to the type of software and hardware your visitors are using. You should ensure that your website looks the same across all browsers and operating systems. In addition, you must pay attention to the screen size and resolution in which your visitors are viewing your website. The goal is to ensure that no visitor has to resort to the horizontal scrolling bar to view your website – this is a major turnoff for most people.

Country of Origin: A good website stats program will also let you know the geographic region of your website’s visitors. This is important if your website only has appeal in a particular region. For instance, if you own a retail store that caters to Southwestern Ontario and you notice that 90% of your website traffíc is coming from the U.S., then it can easily be determined that you need to re-think your online marketing strategy.

The goal of website traffíc analysis is to assess how well or how poorly your website is working for your visitors. From these statistics you can figure out what the problem is and try out some possible solutions. The problem often lies in the website’s visual appearance, layout, navigation structure, or keyword optimization. When making modifications to your website in order to remedy these problems, it’s best to only make minor and gradual adjustments, and then assess the progress over the next month or so to truly understand if your changes were for the better. Also, remember that sites with a greater number of visitors will have more accurate web statistics. Sites with smaller numbers of visitors are more prone to have their averages thrown off by a few anomalous visitors.

About The Author
Paul Coulter owns and operates a Toronto Website Design company that specializes in search engine optimization (SEO).

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ISPs Moving To Paid Email

Jun
13
2007

Goodmail Systems announced last week that four major Internet service providers will be adding CertifiedEmail to their repertoire of email filters. The sweeping partnerships give Goodmail automatic access to some 65 percent of US inboxes.

Microsoft has yet to join the program, a deal that would boost that number to 85 percent. Bulk email senders wanting to bypass the spam filters at Yahoo, AOL, Time Warner Road Runner, Comcast, and Cox, can now do so for a quarter of a cent per email.

Or, as Goodmail competitor and third-party reputation service Habeas’ CEO Des Cahill puts it, at a cost of $2.50 CPM.

Goodmail unveiled its CertifiedEmail product last year amid a storm of controversy when AOL appeared to be forgoing its email whitelists (free sender reputation lists) in favor of fee-based Goodmail.

The press was quick to take note, calling the arrangement an email tax, or a kind of postage that could derail small online businesses and non-profit organizations that depended on bulk email. AOL decided to keep its whitelists after significant public pressure. Yahoo joined up shortly after AOL.

So news a year later that Goodmail is to be put into use at nearly all the major email service providers in the US (except Microsoft and GMail, which announced last year they had no plans to institute a third-party authentication program), sent déjà vu levels to new heights.

The most important question was: Do these email service providers have free whitelists and will they keep them? Or is Goodmail now the only option for bulk emailers looking to reach inboxes with images and links in tact?

Spokespersons with both Verizon and Time Warner have told WebProNews that they will continue to offer whitelisting and have no plans to phase out the free offering. Cox and Comcast, however, may be a different story.

“Cox does not have a white list,” Cox Communications Director of Public Relations Susan Leepson told WebProNews. “All email must go through our spam and virus scanning.”

That includes email Cox sends its own subscribers, continues David Deliman, Product Communications Manager for Cox. Deliman clarifies that Goodmail is not a postage-type company, accepting payment to bypass filters.

“Goodmail performs a strict background check on all senders,” he said, “and their CertifiedEmail is only available to legitimate organizations whose customers have already opted-in to receive e-mail from the company.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that bulk emailers can have their messages delivered with images and links in-tact.

Comcast did not return request for comments regarding whitelists and whether or not bulk emailers would have a choice beyond Goodmail.

Though representatives for Goodmail and the ISPs that responded are heavy on the end-user benefit talking points (Goodmail’s Vice President of Marketing David Atlas was reluctant to speak to the sender-side of the issue at all), Cahill thinks there the monetary benefits shouldn’t be ignored.

“I think what Goodmail has proved is that ISPs want to make money off of email,” he said.

The ISPs involved wouldn’t speak to the financial arrangements between them and Goodmail Systems, but Atlas says they have a 50/50 split in revenue.

While these arrangements may be beneficial to the end-user (a recent study by the ESPC showed over half of respondents were open to authenticated email), and definitely beneficial to Goodmail and the ISPs in terms of revenue, what of bulk senders?

Atlas says non-profit organizations like the Red Cross, who needs protection from spoofing, can get up to an 85 percent discount. Small businesses, however, are not eligible.

“They haven’t proved that senders can afford to pay Goodmail and the ISPs,” said Cahill, who believes the phishing problem can be better addressed via the refinement of industry standards, which is what quarterly-held Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group looks to do.

Article by Jason Lee Miller, a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.

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Some People Will Click On Anything

May
24
2007

Pose whatever theory you like as to why, but an AdWords experiment revealed that people will click on just about anything – even if the ad tells them their computer will be infected with a virus if they do.

Didier Stevens, who works for European IT services firm Contraste Group, conducted a six-month AdWords experiment to see if people would click on an ad with the text “Get infected here!”

And people did, 409 of them to be exact, excluding the bots.

On his blog, Stevens remarked on the inexpensive ease of which an ad can be set up on Google. Sinister minds require the crime fighters to have sinister minds as well. Stevens’ first thought was that AdWords could easily be used to push malicious content to the first page of the search results.

One of the more interesting facets of the experiment is that Stevens wasn’t the least bit sneaky in setting it up. He bought the domain drive-by-download.info (.info is a notorious hub for malware). Google approved the ad.

The website itself has a simple message: Thank you for you’re your visit.

(Though, honestly, it would have been much funnier if Stevens had employed the famous Douglas Adams message from God: Sorry for the inconvenience.)

Over a six-month period, the ad was displayed over 259,000 times, clicked 409 times (click-through rate of 0.16%), and cost Stevens about $23 (6 cents per click). Only seven clicks were suspected to come from bots, which Google successfully filtered out before billing.

Malware crooks are definitely targeting the right browser; 98% of the clicks came via Internet Explorer.

Stevens’ experiment echoes findings of other studies conducted by industry experts. At the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York, a panel on searcher behavior noted: “You could run an ad that said ‘bad prices, bad products’ and people would keep clicking.”

The results also seem to echo his own previous, more intensive study following AOL’s Data Valdez data leak. Upon examining that data, Stevens found that for every 2800 click-throughs, one landed on a “spamdexing” site.

Though the need, effectiveness, and benefits of cost-per-action models have been hotly debated, proponents of CPA billing will no doubt cite information like this, adding to click-fraud numbers for justification.

Indeed, the bottom line seems to be that the lowest common denominator (i.e., unskilled or unaware searchers) will be as present in the CPC world as the ever-hated clickbot. Chalk up the click-happy searcher as a cost of doing business, then, just as grocery stores put up with grape-grazers and hotels write off towel thefts.

About the Author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology.

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Powerful Press Release Distribution Tips

May
04
2007

While press release writing is important, press release distribution plays an equally important role in your return on ínvestment (ROI) with this marketing / public relations tool. Because without targeted distribution, many prospects, clients and other interested parties may not even read your latest announcement or hear about it via other channels; TV, radio, print publications, etc.
In order to bring your news to light with more of your targeted audience, try some of these tips for a more successful distribution:

Media Líst Management

Start a folder on your computer and in hard copy form for media lists in order to keep a líst of contacts readily available and updated. Identify media outlets – both online and off – in your targeted industries; for example: Business and Marketing. Add local, regional, national and International channels to cover television, radio, newspapers, magazines, online publications, newswire and other services
A targeted media líst is an invaluable tool for most businesses. The best way to build your líst is to carefully watch, read and listen, then track media publications and shows, and to identify reporters and producers who would be interested in your story. Contact the media outlets as needed for their most recent contact name, email address, telephone and fax number, before sending your information.

Tip: Using contact management software program such as ACT! or Maximizer for this purpose can help you build and maintain relationships with the media. Even using Excel to create your own spreadsheets helps with organization.

There are several sources online that will help you build your media líst; however, keep in mind that not all of these sources will have up-to-date media information.

Newswires

Newswires distribute your press release directly to editors, other media outlets like Reuters and they also publish the press releases on their website. Many journalists rely on newswire sites for information and story ideas. Wires are often used by largër companies and non-profít organizations. They have the advantage of immediately reaching a broad range of media outlets across the country. The cost is usually $275 – $600 to send a single release, with pricing based on the number of words in your release (a minimum word count will usually apply.)

Mail, Fax, or Email

You can send the news release directly to the media yourself, using the mail, fax, or email. When in doubt about the best option, ask the journalists you will be sending your release to. This can have the advantage of creating a more personal connection with the people you send the release to. It can also be a more cost-effective option if you are targeting a small líst of journalists

Database Building

Newswires offër a fast way to send your press release to a large number of editors. However, you can also build your own líst of media contacts using any of a number of media databases. Most charge either a monthly, annual or per use subscription fee. Search online for “media databases” and “media lists”

Timing

It is best to send your news release early in the day and you will have a better chance of getting your story noticed if your release is not sent on a busy news day. For example, sending a news release out as a major strike or natural disaster was taking place would not be good timing. Mondays and Tuesdays are usually busy news days and by Friday most assignments have been handed out as journalists get ready for the weekend.

Helpful Tips:

1. Don’t send email press releases with attachments – they will be deleted immediately upon receipt.

2. If sending an email release, make sure to write the release within the body of the message.

3. Don’t bug editors. Editors receive hundreds of press releases on a daily basis. Chances are you will irritate most editors by making a second contact to ask if they received your press release. 4. Know deadlines of editors. If you are sending a time-sensitive release, don’t expect a magazine editor to cover your event scheduled for next week. Find out what the appropriate “lead time” is to send your press release for possible distribution in their media.

5. If writing about a web site, make sure the site is updated before you send your release. Editors will visit the site if they have an interest in your product/service.

6. For further assistance and other helpful information visit PRWeb.com

Resources

Here are some handy resources to help with your press releases:

- Chëck out Jack Humphrey’s Content Desk and Content Propulsion Lab, for “Do It Yourself” companies who would love the benefits of easy step-by-step content site building, monetizing and promoting systems for the best ROI, and high-end Public Relations firms with low-end budgets, online at ContentLabInfo.com and ContentDeskInfo.com .

- For a super profít system, head to SEO (search engine optimization) expert Keith Baxter’s Easy Net Marketing (EAN) Profít System at BPlanSite.com . The program has only about a one- to two-hour learning curve to get all set up and going. Articles, content and more -all-in-one.

- Learn how to write with good correspondence courses like those offered by the American Writers & Artists Institute; many are described here: PressSuccess.com .

So when you focus on getting your press releases out, focus on distribution, too. Try some of the tips above to íncrease success with your promotions, and keep a copy of the these tips around for handy reference!

About The Author
Diana Barnum, president of MovingAheadCommunications.com at: (614) 529-9459 (EST). Grab her freebies, tips and help at: http://presssuccess.com/bookstore

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International Brand Naming And How Words Can Hurt You

Mar
19
2007

It was the famous publicist PJ Barnum who said in 1855 “I do not care what people say about me but get my name right”.

In today’s international marketplace, getting names right is vital.

Marketers and brand managers are becoming more and more concerned that their newly created name will be inappropriate in their target markets.

We’ve all seen middle aged marketing executives embarrass themselves when trying to appear trendy to the youth market but things get even worse when attacking overseas markets.

What many people don’t realize is that innocuous English product names often do not travel well. So called, ‘bad’ names, names which embarrass, offend or are just plain unsuitable, are profligate.

Bad products names, bad brand names and even bad company titles, are continuously spawned and the headlong drive towards globalization has given unwelcome publicity to all of them. There are many instances of where things have gone awry, most of them too rude to mention in this article.

It’s not just names which need careful attention, straplines can go just as wrong. Take for example, Electrolux, the Swedish white goods company, who used the strapline “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux” to great effect when promoting a vacuum cleaner across Europe. Unfortunately, when they used the same line for the US launch they became a laughing stock as ‘sucks’ means something is ‘very bad’ in America.

Bad translations on apparel can also convey the wrong message. Take the slogan “I saw the potato”, instead of the correct Spanish translation of “I saw the Pope,” used on promotional T-Shirts for the Pope’s visit to Miami.

The cost of such a damaging event cannot easily be counted. The very fact that a product might have to be hurriedly withdrawn, or quickly re-badged can have a catastrophic effect on the image, position and value of the brand and, of course its owner.

How can one put a value on that? The cost can be enormous, with the repercussions leaving careers in tatters. It seems almost ridiculous to many outside the marketing business that there are still organisations that undertake no due diligence and take a chance on it being ‘alright on the night’.

Most sensible people take out insurance to cover them for almost every event and occasion, yet when instances of such obvious potential devastation occur, it is always too late to do anything about it.

Traditional remedies such as expecting your advertising agency to provide such a service is, with some exceptions, a waste of time. It’s like asking your dentist to give you a diagnosis in respect of a pain in your toe.

You might expect your translation agency to offer this service but, unless they are very experienced and have regularly handled the needs and demands of checking words worldwide, again you could be wasting your money. Proper checking involves much more than whether the word means something contentious or just risible in a foreign language.

So, what can be done to reduce the risks of things going wrong? Fortunately, there are a few simple but highly effective precautions which can be taken:

1. Remember names change with speech

There’s a world of difference between the written and spoken word. Accents and dialects play havoc with the pronunciation of English words and vice versa.

Most of have had an experience of the way our own language is treated by foreigners. We sound similarly strange to foreigners when we try to speak in a language which isn’t our own. Before deciding on a name, simply ask a native speaker of the target language if it sounds OK to them.

2. Avoid names that can’t be pronounced easily, or at all

Although this sounds like another blatantly obvious point, it’s something which many people forget completely. Many languages have an alphabet and a way of speaking which makes the reading of English words difficult or, in some extreme cases, practically impossible.

For instance, all words in Japanese end in either a vowel or the letter ‘n’ so it makes sense to chose a name which follows this convention. By doing this, you can be confident that your Japanese customers will be able to pronounce it without difficulty or embarrassment.

3. Avoid names that confuse

A name may meet every other criteria but due to culture, product qualities or its position in the market place, it may still confuse its intended consumer. This fault will seriously endanger product positioning and so clarity must be established.

Many years ago the then President of the USA, John F Kennedy was making a speech close to the Berlin Wall. He finished off in an effort to try to identify himself with the long-suffering inhabitants by announcing to his audience “Ich bin ein Berliner”. Unfortunately, and unknown, to the President he was telling everyone that he was a doughnut; a Berliner being the popular name for a local pastry.

I am often amazed that companies spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars launching a product with a name which is so obviously wrong that it would have been flagged as inappropriate immediately had they undertaken proper checking.

The cost of checking is tiny compared to the damage caused by not doing so.

About the Author:
Peter Bennett is CEO of London Translations Limited which specializes in international name checking and linguistic assessment: Download his FREE report “International Brand Disasters and How To Avoid Them” from: http://www.london-translations.co.uk/validata.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Uncategorised | Comments Off

How Google Measures Link Popularity

Mar
06
2007

Link popularity is by far the most important factor for determining your search engine ranking. You need to know what link popularity is, why it is so important, and how Google measures your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top of Google, you will rise to the top of all the other search engines as well). But, before we talk about how Google measures linking, we need to cover some basics.

Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. Google uses a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

Also, Google gives an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.

Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.

It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site. As long as you are persistent and tailor your strategy towards Google, you will do fine.

About the Author:
Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers create a free web form with the code to email the web form responses.

Posted in Google, SEO, Uncategorised | Comments Off

Understanding the True Value of a Resource Library for Your Website

Feb
21
2007

Many websites currently offer a resource library for visitors – an area filled with articles covering relevant topics to the industry with which the site is connected. The articles may cover how to do something or define a particular aspect of the industry, but they do not usually directly sell the company’s products or services.

Benefits of a Resource Library
While it’s true that a resource library, on the surface, exists to benefit site visitors, it doesn’t end there — they also provide benefits that can directly impact any business. First of all, they spread goodwill among a business’s prospect base – and its non-prospect base as well. The site is seen by visitors as offering free information about important subject matter – and that makes it a more attractive site to return to in the future when a purchase will be made or a service established

Second, with a solid resource library, the site puts itself in a great position to organically attract important inbound links. Outside sites will notice the offerings of important and unbiased information and link to individual articles or to the resource library as a whole. This will boost traffic and rankings overall.

Third, if the articles in the section are optimized properly, they will also boost rankings for popular and competitive key phrases, driving additional targeted traffic to the site. The traffic may enter the site at the articles, but visitors are then likely to click for further information about the site itself.

A Common Objection to Adding a Resource Library
The most common objection a search engine optimization company hears when recommending that a site add a resource library is “I want to sell my product, not educate.” However, this is shortsighted. It is important to reach buyers at all stages of the sales cycle. For example, if someone is just starting to investigate a product or service, a site with an appropriate informational article will reach him or her at this critical early stage. The prospect will then likely remember the experience when he or she is ready to buy and will return to the site.

In addition, a site with a resource library can help a salesperson save valuable time. With quality articles freely available on the site, the salesperson will no longer need to take the time to explain the basics to a prospect – the site will have already taken care of that. Instead, the salesperson can focus on speaking to the people who are ready to make a purchase.

Examples of Successful Resource Libraries
There are several sites that serve as great examples of this approach. Let’s look at three of them – Bed, Bath and Beyond; Lowe’s; and Step Two Designs (an Australian consulting firm).

Bed, Bath, and Beyond opens its resource library with a friendly “Need help shopping?” and follows it up by telling visitors that they can “browse through the sections below for helpful shopping hints on a variety of topics.” There is no mention of specific sales at any point on this page, which is found at www.bedbathandbeyond.com.

Taking a deeper look, one will find that the targeted phrase “window treatments” brings up Bed, Bath, and Beyond’s guide on the subject on the first page of Google. This phrase has the impressive monthly search estimate (using data from WordTracker) of 55,304. Note that this page, which is an unbiased article offering tips on choosing different types of window treatments, and not a retail sales page, is what achieves the rankings.

The home improvement chain Lowe’s actually has several resource libraries available on its site, from buying guides to an extensive how-to library. Its buying guide page, found at www.lowes.com, notes, “Work Smarter: We’ll help you find the right equipment and tools you need for all of your projects.” And the company’s article on choosing floor tiles appears on the first page of Google for the targeted phrase “tile floor,” which has a monthly search estimate of 2,046. Again, it’s an informational page and not a product page that gets the great rankings.

Both of the above examples are great, but you don’t need to be selling a product online – or even be in the retail business at all – to use a resource library to your benefit. Step Two Designs is a consulting firm that offers a resource library of whitepapers on its site at www.steptwo.com.au. Its article “How to Evaluate a Content Management System,” for example, establishes its usefulness right at the top, stating that “No vendors or products are mentioned in this article: this is not a survey of current commercial solutions. Instead, it provides tools to assist you to conduct a review of suitable products.”

This article appears on the first page of Google for the targeted phrase “content management systems,” which has a monthly search estimate of 2,356. While this may be a lower number than the Bed, Bath and Beyond example, a consulting firm’s average sale will likely be greater than that of a single purchase from a retail outlet, and so these visitors are potentially more valuable. Even in this type of business, a resource library will quickly prove its value.

Conclusion
Resource libraries clearly offer something of value for everyone involved. Prospects appreciate their existence, search engines reward sites that have them, and salespeople are relieved of the burden of explaining basic concepts to early prospects. You can either create your articles in-house or, if you’re not sure where to start, hire a search engine optimization company to help you with everything from idea generation to writing. In either case, with just a little bit of effort your site too can realize the benefits of establishing this type of section.

About The Author
Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine optimization company. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs, ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue has local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, Cirronet, and DS Waters, and was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

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