Link Bait for Different Industries
Whether you are involved in SEO or not, you are sure to have come across link bait during the course of your internet travels. Think about it; have you seen an interesting and informative depiction of the BP oil spill recently? Have you ever linked to a funny video from your Facebook account, to make your friends laugh?
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Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore Google Places Any More
Maybe you never were ignoring Google Places, but if you just didn’t take much notice before, the latest update to SERPs will have changed all that. Google’s Place Search has rolled out over the past month, so you’ll start to see a new layout when Google predicts that you are searching for something local to you. There are a number of changes in the view you are presented with when compared to a “normal” search, as we used to understand it.
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Adwords Extensions
Top Adwords Extensions of 2010
Following up on my reports update, one report I am looking forward to seeing in Adwords is more of a customisable site links report. Site links is my favourite extension that has come out this year. What’s yours? Just in case it had slipped your memory, here’s a run down of the extensions we have seen in 2010.
Uh-Oh. Where Did My Adwords Reports Go?
Getting to Know the New Adwords Reports System
In the summer Google warned us via the Adwords interface that the reports section as we knew it would be removed forever. And this induced mass panic, with people buying up stocks of bottled water and tinned tuna, to hideout in the mountains until normality resumed. No, not really, but it was a rather major change. Thankfully you can still run the reports as we remember them. Here’s how to locate the reports in their new places and some examples of really important ones to be running on a regular basis.
Which server-side language is right for you?
With many server-side languages such as PHP,Perl,ASP,JSP and Cold Fusion only a subset of the many available choices, the best server-side language to use is a debate that never seems to end. With each developer having their own favorite language it is not a surprise if different developers recommend a different language for you. It is after all wise to note that one application development can take weeks in one language and days in another and vice versa. So how do you decide which language is right for you?
PHP: coding to optimize performance
I hate to sound like the wise guy, but here I have some great code optimization info that constantly escapes our already busy mind. It really does make the difference.
As you are well aware most developers write their Php projects without keeping performance in mind; this can easily lead a simple problem into a number of complex solutions unnecessarily wasting resources for which there is no need. Here a few tips to spice up your PHP applications to increase performance. The little bit effort you spend doing this will be noticed by your end users.
Improving User Experience: Schneiderman & Gestalt
As we are moving towards a stage where growing technological development is vastly allowing us to produce applications like never seen before, I would like to direct your attention to Schneinderman and Gestalt Laws; years of user experience summed up in a few simple rules enabling you to produce that slik application whilst ensuring a lifetime experience to your audience.
Below are examples of how each rule is satisfied.
Reversing Ajax (Server Push)
Reverse Ajax also known as Server Push is a method for sending data from the client to the server and then relying on the server to push the data back to the client whenever that becomes available. Whilst polling and other techniques have fallen short of live server updates from the server to the client, HTTP server push has so far lived up to expectations.
Fig 1.0 – The web server leaves the connection open.
Creative XML Site Maps
I’ve recently been concentrating on ranking in international search results, rather than just Google, Yahoo and Bing.co.uk and this has led me to seeing some standard best practices in a new light.
One of the most important things you can do, especially with a brand new site, is to make sure you have a great xml sitemap in place. This is something Google recommends and once it is created you can submit it to the search engines in webmaster tools. It’s also best to add a rule to your robots txt so that as well as indexing the whole site, robots are pointed in the direction of you sitemap. E.g. it would be:
Robots.txt
Index:/
Index:/sitemap.xml
But did you know that you can submit more than one site map to webmaster tools?
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Android Playing Catch-Up
Between February and May of this year RIM, Apple, Microsoft and Palm’s operating systems all experienced a drop in percentage of their share of the market, but Android’s share grew significantly. comScore has revealed this information about the US Marked in their most recent analysis.
RIM, of Blackberry fame, has retained the lead in this spring period, but dropped from 42.1% to 41.7% of market share. The biggest point difference was for Microsoft, who went from 15.1% to 13.2%, while Apple experienced a point drop of 1.9, falling from 25.4% to 24.4%.
Although Android has retained its original position as the 4th largest smartphone provider, it grew much faster than any of the competition during spring and indications suggest that this trend is likely to continue.
Source comScore
