Internet Marketing News
Firefox will live to search another day
For the millions of users who have unplugged from Microsoft’s atrocious Internet Explorer and plugged into Firefox, they will be pleased to learn that Google has signed a new three-year agreement with Mozilla to keep its search engine as the default choice in Firefox.
Financial terms were not disclosed, according to various news reports, Mozilla said that in 2010, approximately 98 per cent of its royalties come from deals with search companies.
However, even if Firefox fades away – as many are predicting – there are other, non-IE choices available. Apple’s Safari is available for the Mac and the PC, the ever resilient Opera and even Google has its own browser in Chrome.
Under the new agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for Firefox users around the world.
This is great news for web developers who have grown accustomed to Firefox, a relatively stable browser, and the many indispensible extensions, plug-ins and add-ons that assist with project design, coding, work flow and management.
Here are a couple of Market IQ’s can’t-do-without web developoment Firefox extensions, plug-ins and add-ons:
Firebug
Firebug integrates with Firefox and places a barrel full of website development tools at your avail while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. You swap out elements, script and images, view, test and get it right before opening the actual server-side script.
SEO Quake
A great toolbar with dozens of reporting modules on site and page meta content information, page ranking, search engine presence, social media standing, plus much, much more. While Market IQ is a Victoria web development firm, we must consider the web as a whole and competitive analysis requires that we know about the strengths and weaknesses of our client’s competitors. SEO Quake makes this process that much easier and our results that much stronger.
IE Tab
Amazingly, Microsoft Internet Explorer has the most users because IE is bundled in most new Windows installs. Because of this many Websites, pages and online services are written to accommodate IE and not Firefox of the other browsers. With IE Tab installed in Firefox, you can view pages in IE's rendering engine within a Firefox tab, all without having to fully load IE.
LastPass
With a bank vault of passwords, maintaining account order can be a challenge. LastPass is great for encrypting and keeping passwords safe but also easily accessed use. It is also available for IE and Chrome.
FireFTP
Switching between and FTP program and a browser can get tedious. FireFTP integrates the processes. FireFTP loads in a tab and provides all the access FTP access needed without loading a separate program.
You may have remarkable insight to share with the world, but simply writing a great blog post is not enough. Unless people can find you it all so much hot air. Here are a couple strategies we employ at Market IQ to get your business blog found and indexed by the search engines and to drive readers - and hopefully customers - through your business website.
First of all, understand that great advice and content is not enough. The content must be written in such a manner and the blog structured in such a way so that readers and the search engines find you.
First: conduct keyword research
When writing your incisive screeds, be sure to include appropriate keywords in your posts. Every post should get noticed by search engines for the right reasons and those reasons are defined by the specific set of keywords. Do not be too general though. If you are a water filtration specialist, simply dropping “water†and “water filter†throughout the post will not cut it. Consider what are called long-tail keywords such as ""reverse osmosis 2000 well water filter"" or ""UV water filters for sinks."" Good keywords and keyword phrases should generate a small, but well-defined and targeted amount of search traffic. There are many keyword research tools you can use and you should be seeking out those keywords and keyword phrases that generate between 500 - 1,000 exact-match searches each month. While you will not be capturing the millions of users searching for “water†and “water filter†you will be tapping into a clearly defined clientele and audience.
Second: Get quality sites to link back to your blog posts
Backlinks allow you to keep track of other pages on the web that link to your blog posts. Backlinks play an important role in the indexing of your business blog. The search engines consider backlinks and endorsement of your blog posting. If you generate numerous, high quality, relevant sites backlinking to your page, the search engines assume your blog is useful for users and is a quality source for information.
A great strategy to improve your business blog’s rank in search engine results is to make guest posts on relevant sites and participating in industry forums. The goal is to have these posts link back to your site, and boost your search rank.
Three: Share and share alike
Google, Bing, Yahoo! and the other search engines are now taking notice of the number of times your content is shared on Facebook or the number of links back to your site from Twitter. You must incorporate social networking into your business blog strategy. Be selective in the social forums you participate. Maintain an active presence on the social networking sites that are popular with your clients and customers. Include tools that will allow them to share the content on your blog with others.
Four: Consider your site structure.
The navigation structure of your business blog can draw in and drive away potential readers and clients. As well as influence how it is indexed and crawled by the search engines. A couple of structure tips:
- Every page should be accessible within three clicks.
- Scrub duplicate content from your blog. When pages on your blog have the same content, search engines may display only one page of the content in their results. You should rewrite any duplicate content to make the pages and posts appear different and distinct from each other.
- There should be internal links in every post and page on your business blog. While helping users find other content, this also increases the search engines' ability to reach every page on your site.
Think of Google Analytics as being your website's heart monitor. Google Analytics are indispensible when maintaining the health and wealth of your company website and profit centre. That is why it's important to stay up and informed on all the new tools, gadgets and gizmos Google continues rolling out and all the hidden gems that are already whirring in the background.
As a Victoria web development company, Market IQ creates custom reports, filters and funnels for many clients. We have developed a list of sorts, which includes the most important website reporting features, performance gauges and analytics tools.
In no particular order:
Real-Time Data Reporting
In the dark ages (last year, actually) Google Analytics took almost 24 hours after the user's visit to provide the user's data. Now Google analytics provides real time data. We can now view reports in real time, letting us view site activity as it happens. This great preparing a campaign launch prior to the launch of the actual campaign.
Custom Dashboards
If you analyze dozens of client sites like we do at Market IQ, it is important to maintain order with reports, clients and their unique requirements. With the new Google analytics, Dashboard lets users create up to 20 personalized dashboards, develop widgets and formats. At Market IQ, we work with numerous insurance agents and companies. Some agencies require different reports for agents, support staff and their advertising agencies. With the new Dashboard system, we are able to provide different reports for every department by creating a unique dashboard for each department. Unique analytics goals and funnels are created based on each department's defined goals.
How Fast is your Website?
Site Speed will tell you. We can now tell clients how long it takes their pages to load. This is very important feature. A slow site can ruin the user experience and search engine ranking of a website. In fact, load time is one of the important factors when it comes to organic search rankings. If a site is lagging, we are able to identify and then modify the server, HTML, Java script – whatever – to get it up to an acceptable speed.
Are visitors doing what you want them to do?
With event tracking, we are now able to treat events as goals. As a Victoria web development company, we develop and place content and information on client sites, including ePubs, PDFs, movies, audio, RSS, subscription services and also shopping carts. With event tracking, we can now find out how many visitors downloaded a PDF or WAV file from a client site. We can also find out how many visitors viewed more than 30 seconds of a video.
Analytics Navigation
While Google Analytics has compartmentalized and clearly delineated reports for different accounts and sites, scrolling through the many accounts has, up until now, been a big aggravation. Under Analytics new interface, there is an activated menu search. We can quickly navigate to the proper reports and clients.
Keyword Trending
The bigger the word, the more popular the word. Already a staple in the Wordpress world, Google has introduced Keyword Clouds to Analytics so that users can easily visualize the top keywords that users are relying on to find client sites.
Webmaster Tools Integration
What was once separate is now combined. Those days of flipping between Webmaster and Analytics accounts are over.
Social Engagement
How sociable is your website?  With the new analytics reports you can learn how visitors socially engaged with the site through tracking of “liked†information.
Reaching Beyond the Confines of the site URL
Google Analytics has let users track visitor movement throughout a website for a long time through the use of custom funnels and reporting. With Multi-Channel Funnels, we can determine the funnel through which visitors arrived at the site. A great tool that helps marketing planning and spend strategies – especially when affiliate marketing is used.
Victoria business owners, retailers and, in fact, all businesses selling online can learn a lot from the American shopping experience. Software firm Compuware recently released the results of its Black Friday to Cyber Monday research. The findings provide many practical tips to help online retailers maximize their online sales presence. These are findings retailers should take to their web developer and web development company to ensure optimum performance and return.
The Compuware study measured shoppers' estimated satisfaction with web and mobile site performance for the top U.S. online retailers. Once users arrived on site, Compuware then analyzed the activities that happened when visitors load web pages or interact with dynamic elements on the page.
Winning Elements Emphasise Site Performance
Compuware looked at Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Amazon, American Eagle, Apple, Gap, Home Depot, J. Crew, QVC, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears, Staples, Symantec, Target, Toys “R†Us and Urban Outfitters. According to Compuware, light third-party content, lightweight JavaScript and static images hosted on a separate cache domain helped J. C. Penney stand out as a top performer. Compuware suggested top-performing sites could improve site and page loading time and performance by using CSS Sprites to merge some static images and combine and minimize JavaScript files.
Look for the Bottlenecks
The Compuware study recommends that retailers analyze third-party content, such as social media plug-ins and ads, to see if they are slowing down site performance. Compuware recommends that image sizes be reduced wherever possible, and text files should be combined or compressed to help reduce download time.
Red Flags
JavaScript was a big source of performance problems. The study recommends using updated code libraries and coding practices and analyzing the impact of JavaScript performance across the major browsers and to check server-side performance, especially with dynamic pages.
Pay Attention to Mobile
Numbers indicate that in 2011, mobile shoppers grew to 11% of all sales. IBM recently reported that mobile devices would drive 15% of web traffic over the course of the 2011 holiday season. Retailers have to ensure their web developer has presented a fast and viable shopping experience for mobile customers. Slow loading pages and content will drive away potential customers. A stream-lined experience which features the product and check out components is essential.
What to do?
Read the reports and take the findings to your web developer and web development company to ensure optimum performance and return on your e commerce site.