The history of search engines

Provided by PPC Blog – The History of Search: a Timeline

Infographic by the PPC Blog.com

Which one do you prefer Drupal or WordPress?

This great presentation from Jen Lampton shows why Drupal should be more like WordPress.

Why Drupal Should Be More Like WordPress

View more presentations from Jen Lampton.

201 Tips to Get your Blog to Rock

201 A-List Tips to Rock Your Blog is written by Leo Babauta & Mary Jaksch – this 39 page guide provides some interesting tips on how to write great blog articles.

Contents include:

• Introduction
• Sizzling Start-Up and Branding Tips
• Dazzling Design Tips
• Tips to Ramp up Your Writing
• Hot Headline Tips
• Picture-Perfect Image Tips
• Tips to Power Your Promotion
• Glorious Guest Posting Tips
• Tips to Skyrocket Your Subscriptions
• Magnificent Money-Making Tips
• Motivating Mindset Tips, and
• One Last Tip

Find out more at 201 A-List Tips to Rock Your Blog

How does Google work

Courtesy of PPC blog – this is a great infographic showing how Google works.

Infographic by PPC Blog

Government websites – are they still relevant?

Last week I attended my first eMetrics conference in Sydney. It was the first time eMetrics had come to Australia. Jim Sterne gave the opening keynote address. He was fantastic to listen to – both informative and entertaining!

His opening gambit was to ask the participants what were the three reasons for them being there in the room?

My three reasons were:

1. How to determine the return on investment (ROI) for government websites;

2. How government websites can better meet the needs of their customers;

3. How government websites can reach the people they are missing.

His keynote then went on to talk about how the market place is a conversation, its not about cost its about value. Its about developing a social media marketing framework that allows people to communicate better. Its also looking at it from the customer’s point of view.

I came out of that session thinking that the government shouldn’t be thinking about government websites, they should be looking at how to network with their consituents using social media – and that the government was totally missing the point.

Government is really good at spin – they have a message, a campaign and they put it out there on TV, radio and newspapers and on their government website. They want everyone to sing from the government’s hymn sheet. But more and more people are seeing through the spin – they don’t necessarily believe the message any more, let alone go looking for it.

If government wants to reach the people, then government needs to play where the people are playing and that is not on a government website. The people are playing in the social media space.

Nielsen’s Social Media Report – Wave 3 2009-2010 claims 38% of Australians are interacting with companies via social media and most prefer to do this through a social networking site rather than the company’s own website. This could apply equally to government – it would be easy to assume that more Australians would like to interact with government via social media rather than the government’s own website. Other statistics of interest – 63% of Australian have watched an online video, and 14% have either browsed or followed companies on Twitter, 73% have looked at a social networking profile, and 57% have updated a social networking profile.

Nielson also stated that "Social networking on sites such as Facebook was a key driver in Australians’ trial and uptake of social media. Close to three in four online Australians (73%) have looked at others’ profiles on social networks and well over one third (37%) of these report to be interacting with others via social networking sites on a daily basis. Facebook dominates the online social networking space, with three quarters of Australian Internet users (75%) reporting to have visited Facebook 59 percent have a Facebook profile, and the average time spent on Facebook in a given month is 8:19 hours – seven and a half hours more than its closest rival site, YouTube."

So my takeaways from this session were that if government looks at issues and needs from the people’s point of view, they will never fail. Government needs to play where the people are playing and that is in social media sites such as Facebook or they will become distant and irrelevant.

This is not how you manage web projects

Chris Roane on the SitePoint site has written a piece entitled "14 Ways to Be the World’s Worst Web Project Manager"

His 14 points include:

• Let Interruptions Dictate Your Schedule
• Don’t Communicate Clearly with Your Clients
• Keep Your Clients Guessing
• If You’re Not Going to Meet a Deadline, Don’t Tell the Client
• Always Underestimate the Resources Needed for a Project
• If a Client is Being Rude, Respond in Kind
• Never Admit to Making a Mistake
• Shift Blame to Someone on Your Team
• Spend Very Little Time Writing Emails
• Don’t Get to Know Your Team
• Assume Your Team is on Schedule
• Don’t Create a System to Remind You to Contact Clients
• Come into Meetings Ill-prepared

Read in full Chris’s article: 14 Ways to Be the World’s Worst Web Project Manager.

5 Articles you should read: 13 April 2010

Document Accessibility Should Begin at the Author Level, By Deborah Kaplan and Monir ElRayes. Government Technology, April 9, 2010. "…Significant progress has been made to improve the accessibility of content presented on Web sites, often in HTML format. However, the accessibility of other electronic formats, such as Microsoft Word documents and PDFs, still lags behind and is often added as an afterthought, if at all. Given the enormous volume of content created daily — often in the form of documents authored by individuals who know little about accessibility — this means far too much material is inaccessible to far too many people…."

SEO 101 – Parts 1 – 16, by Stoney deGeyter, Search Engine Guide, January 19, 2010 – April 1, 2010.

Part 2: Everything You Need To Know About Title Tags
Part 3: Everything You Need To Know About Meta Description and Keyword Tags
Part 4: Everything You Need To Know About Heading Tags and Alt Attributes
Part 5: Everything You Need To Know About Domain Names
Part 6: Everything You Need To Know About Search Engine Friendly URLs & Broken Links
Part 7: Everything You Need To Know About Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Part 8: Everything You Need To Know About Keywords
Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms
Part 10: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Qualifiers
Part 11: Everything You Need To Know About SEO Copywriting
Part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content
Part 13: Everything You Need To Know About Links
Part 14: Everything You Need To Know About Link Anatomy
Part 15: Everything You Need To Know About Linking

Search and Rescue: How to Become Findable and Shareable in Social Media, By Brian Solis, Search Engine Watch, April 1, 2010. " Search isn’t an isolated experience. The act of looking for information is now fused with validation, which means the socialization of search will unite discovery with context and relationships. It all begins with where we purposely search for relevant content and also where we respond to interesting information that crosses our path…" Then read Optimize Your Brand for Sharing and Social Search in 11 Steps, By Brian Solis, Search Engine Watch, April 2, 2010. "Yesterday, we focused on how to make your brand findable and shareable in social media. A white paper by Gigya validates the shift to, and resulting importance of, social search and its dependence on crowd participation. Online businesses must optimize in order to earn referral traffic from social networks. .."

The 8-Step SEO Strategy, Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs, Posted by laura, SEOmoz Blog, on April 6th, 2010. "… The first step in most marketing campaigns, Search Marketing included, is to start by defining your target audience.  Your target audience is a defined set of people who you are marketing your product to…"

Horizontal Attention Leans Left. Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, April 6, 2010. Summary: Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable…

Google taking over the world?

The Hungry Beast on the ABC has put together a quick snapshot about how Google maybe aiming to "own you"!

Web Analytics for Government Course in Melbourne 11 March 2010

1 Day Web Analytics Course in Melbourne on March 11, 2010

Learn how to analyse a government website using Google Analytics, Urchin or another web analytics tool.

If you are currently using a web analytics tool to analyse your department’s website or are looking to add this to your website, then this course is for you.

Who Should Attend?

Managers & professionals working in Government, web developers working on government websites

Pre-requisites

None. A basic understanding of websites and search engines is recommended.

What You Get

• 1 full day of face to face training.
• A detailed 91 page printed course manual for each attended.
• Copies of the slides used in the course.
• A certificate of attendance.
• An example Excel KPI spreadsheet with the key formulas to track the success of your website.
• Access to additional course materials, utilities & resources not available to the public on the Panalysis website.
• A discount voucher 2 hour personal consulting & coaching session in Google Analytics & other professional services.

Learning Outcomes

After attending this training session you will be able to:

• Understand what Google Analytics can do.
• Install and configure Google Analytics.
• Perform analysis on your website using Google Analytics.
• Explain how Google Analytics can add value to your department.
• Understand which reports you should use in Google Analytics to be effective in your running your website.
• Set measurable business goals for your website and explain how Google Analytics can help you achieve these outcomes.
• Use a range of Google Analytics reports to analyse your website’s performance against these goals.
• Identify the visitor’s "primary purpose" for visiting the website and whether succeeded.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of content on the website.
• Understand common pitfalls / misinterpretations of Google Analytics reports
• Discuss important issues in planning new business strategies based on analysis of your business’s website.

For more information:

More information is available or contact:

Panalysis Pty Ltd
Tel: 1300 368 553
Suite 2, Level 3, 71 Longueville Road, Lane Cove, NSW 2066 Australia

Email: admin@panalysis.com.au

Registration form for: Melbourne, March 11, 2010

Google AdWords Seminars for Success in Melbourne: 22 and 23 April 2010

Topics covered include:

• AdWords Basics: Discover the best ways to organise your campaigns and learn common search marketing lingo.
• Keywords: Discover the keyword strategies that achieve the best results for your spend.
• Tracking Results: Learn to identify ads and keywords that really work and to improve those that don’t.
• New AdWords Interface: How to effectively use the new interface to save time and improve results.

Pricing for each day includes GST, seminar slides on a USB thumb drive, manual, Wi-Fi, lunch, $50 AdWords advertising credit and Google goodies.

• Day 1 – AdWords: $499
• Day 2 – AdWords Advanced: $499
• Save Money! Two-day seminar package: $898

Go to www.mangoldsengers.com/seminars/google-adwords-seminars-for-success for details

or contact :

Michael Mangold for assistance with questions, bookings and invoicing, phone 02 9960 6577 email michael@mangoldsengers.com