Are you interested to indulge yourself in the field of e-commerce? It is true that e-commerce is the latest sensation in the field of business. Basically, e-commerce is a business technique, where the objects are bough or sold through various electronic media. The electronic media include Internet or the computer network and some other. The e-commerce is gaining some rapid popularity due to the increasing use of the Internet. On other hand, there is no maintenance cost required while you have to spend lots of money in maintenance of shop exist in real. Due to the low maintenance cost the e-commerce business groups are selling the products in low rates. This is another cause of its popularity. Now, to be successful in the field of e-commerce this is very much important to have a good website that reflects your business quality. In this article, we will discuss about the essential features of an E-commerce website.

First of all it is important to have a good template to create a good e-commerce website. It is always better to buy a ‘copyright web template’ for your own e-commerce website. Basically, this is to ensure that your website looks completely different if compared to some other competitive e-commerce websites. Now you may edit the web template that you bought as par your own necessity. But if you are enough confident about your skills, then you can design the web template yourself. Now the second important thing is regarding the website address. Try to have domain that ends with .com. Basically, it is important since .com is the most common and traditional extension of the websites. Now it is also very much important, to have a simple name as the web address. Don’t put any complex name, which is tough to pronounce in the web address filed. Try to avoid the special characters like ‘@’, ‘#’ or even ‘-‘ in the field of website address.

Ecommerce website design should feature the entire collection of your e-commerce business store. It is also important to put the details of each and every product in the website. It will be often better if you create a section where the user of the particular product can rate it and create a review. If possible, you can put 3 or 4 photos of every product snapped from different angles. It will be better option to feature the best selling products in the front page. Now, if you are selling the products of different categories then you have to sort out the products with respect to the categories. It will be better to include such tools so that two different products of same category can be compared with respect to different features. Promote the discount offers hugely and carefully. It is also essential to use a secured server for the website since the matters of payment and money transfer related to it.

Last but not least, it is important to perform the search engine optimization techniques to get the higher rank in different search engines. It is very much important for the website to be in the higher ranked side to be successful in the field of e-commerce.

Source From: http://www.articlecircle.com/internet/ecommerce-website-design.html

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Trust is a key usability issue when it comes to running a successful online business. Most people automatically view web businesses with a bias against them compared to their brick and mortar counterparts. Your ability to convince your visitors that yours is a trustworthy business is one of the key components to getting visitors to convert into customers.

Creating a website that conveys trust can be tricky. There are rarely any answers that are always “right” for every visitor. There are, however, several factors that have universal appeal to the weary shopper.

Company info

Provide your visitors information about your company and its primary owners and operators. Treat your shoppers with a company history and links to frequently asked questions, policies and physical location. The more information you provide the better satisfied any concerned shopper will tend to be.

Prompt responses

Shoppers want to know that they can rely on a company to meet their needs and concerns quickly once contacted. Be sure to respond promptly and professionally to all customer inquiries. Don’t let email or phone messages go unanswered for more than a couple of hours, especially if requests are urgent.

Feedback options

Create ways for visitors to provide user feedback regarding your products or services and encourage them to do so. Be sure to follow up with feedback and use it to better your services.

Transaction security

Emphasize that online transactions will be handled securely and that privacy is a top priority. Using secure logos and links to privacy policies page is a must.

Offer discounts

Sometimes discounts can be a negative, making you appear desperate. However when implemented properly and professionally, percent-off discounts and coupons can be effective and giving visitors an added desire to move forward.

Delivery options

Be sure to provide low cost and/or varied delivery options. Having more options available allow visitors to select the delivery method they prefer and trust the most, which will then lend additional trust to you.

Brand and product quality

If you sell brand-name products, be sure to emphasis this as your customers will be more likely to purchase a product brand they recognize. If you don’t have brand name products, create a brand and emphasize that. An unknown brand name product is still better than a no-name brand product.

Off-line retailer comparison

Provide your visitors compelling reasons why they should purchase products from you rather than an offline competitor. Highlight free shipping, lower prices, easy access customer support, etc.

Return policy

Adding a no-hassle return policy can clinch a sale. Be sure to have return policy information easily available and spell out exactly what is required to return a product and/or get a refund.

Minimal / clearly distinguishable ads

Don’t clutter up your space with ads. Keep your visitors focused on purchasing your products. If you have ads in informational areas of the site keep them to a minimum and make sure they don’t overpower your own information.
In an anonymous world where customers cannot examine a product or meet with company reps face to face, trust is much harder to come by. Online businesses have many more hurdles than offline businesses when it comes to establishing trust with their customer base. This means that as an online business, you have to do more than just create a compelling reason to convince people “why you” rather than a competitor.

Establishing trust is the key. Your shoppers need to believe without a doubt that, as a business, you’re not just in it for yourself, but that you care and will take care of the customer. Without having established any sort of trust there really is no sale.

Article source - http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/10-ways-to-help-your-visitors-trust-you.php

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The latest version of Apple’s browser adds some major enticements to switch.

By Seth Weintraub

Apple released Safari 3.1 on March 18 with an updated rendering engine that makes the fastest Internet browser even faster.

On top of that, Apple’s new browser includes some features that reflect the future of the HTML 5 specification: offline storage, media support, and CSS animations and Web fonts. It also adds some needed compatibility and bug fixes, as well as some other new features that really make it a great everyday browser.

For the uninitiated, Apple provides a great PDF overview of Safari. You can get the upgrade/installer from apple.com/safari/download/ (it’s about a 16MB download for both Mac and PC) or simply update from Software Update. The installation is easy but strangely requires a restart on Macs but not on Windows. By the way, Safari 3.1 is the first Windows version not to carry the “beta” tag.

The interface and the user experience are largely unchanged from those in Safari 3.0. Under the hood, however, Apple has made some significant changes that it has pulled from the latest builds of the open-source WebKit engine.

WebKit is the framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari. It is also the basis of the Web browsing engine in iPhone’s Mobile Safari, Symbian’s browser, the Google Android platform and Adobe’s new AIR platform.

Testing

To check out how well Safari 3.1 handles Web sites, I ran it through some popular standards testing — and found that it leads the pack. In the Acid3 Tests, which were created by the Web Standards Project to test dynamic browser capabilities, Safari 3.1 scored 75 out of 100, significantly higher than the previous version of Safari and other shipping browsers (Firefox 3 Beta 4 scored 68, while the most recent WebKit scored 92).

However, the big news is how fast the new version of Safari is. How fast? I tested Safari 3.1 on my first-generation 2-GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM. In MooTools’ SlickSpeed speed/validity test, Safari came out on top in almost every category on both Mac and PC.

It also did significantly better than any shipping browser on the SunSpider JavaScript speed tests (although since these tests are hosted at WebKit.org, they are perhaps biased). For example, on the Mac, Safari scored 4430ms, compared with 5048ms for Firefox 3 Beta 4.

While I spend 90% of my time on a Macintosh, I also installed Safari on my Windows XP box to see how it stacked up against Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox. In short, it worked extremely well for everyday browsing, offering speed and efficiency, especially on a four- or five-year-old machine. It also performed really well with lots of tabs open.

Although Safari 3.1 does perform much better than the shipping version of Firefox, the speed improvements in Firefox 3 Beta 4 are catching up with Safari 3.1 — though Firefox 3 did consume more CPU cycles during my tests.

One of the drawbacks of Safari has been the perceived “over-smoothing” or softening of fonts on the PC. While this hasn’t been completely fixed, Apple’s Safari 3.1 allows Web sites to specify fonts outside the seven Web-safe font families; these new fonts can be downloaded by the browser as needed.

Unfortunately, there are still prominent features that are part of rival browsers that Safari simply can’t match. For example, Safari doesn’t have all of the add-ons that Firefox enjoys, such as the Google toolbar.

Furthermore, if you need to use a site that employs Microsoft’s proprietary DirectX technology — like Microsoft Exchange’s Outlook Web Access, for example — you’ll find that the experience on Safari leaves much to be desired. In this case, you’re better off using Internet Explorer.

Finally, Opera offers features, such as direct BitTorrent downloads, that aren’t offered in Safari.

With the 3.1 release, Safari has become the fastest browser you can use. If that isn’t enough reason to make a switch, its strong adherence to Web standards and rapid adoption of new technologies might make you think again.

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By Kevin McLaughlin, CMP Channel, 7:58 PM EST Mon. Feb. 04, 2008,

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) may have soothed the angst of the service pack hungry masses by releasing Vista SP1 to manufacturing, but users won’t be able to actually download it until mid-March at the earliest, company officials said Monday.

During beta testing for Vista SP1, Microsoft found that some device drivers were causing problems on systems with SP1 installed. Although the issues can be fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, Microsoft decided this would be too complicated for most users. As a result, Microsoft will spend the next month hunting for additional problematic device drivers, said David Zipkin, senior product manager in Windows Client Group.

“With drivers, we wanted to make sure when folks upgrade to Vista that they have a smooth experience,” Zipkin said.

Microsoft is currently working with its hardware partners to hammer out the device driver glitches, according to Zipkin, who declined to name the partners.

In mid-March, Microsoft plans to release Vista SP1 in 5 languages — English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese — through Windows Update and the Download Center, Zipkin said, adding that Microsoft will ensure that SP1 isn’t pushed out to PCs that have the aforementioned drivers installed.

In April, Microsoft will begin auto updates of Vista SP1 to users who’ve chosen this option, and will also release the rest of the language specific versions of Vista SP1, Zipkin said.

Microsoft has handed off the final Vista SP1 bits to its OEM partners, and if testing goes well, they’ll soon begin building new PCs based on Vista SP1 images. Microsoft has also begun pressing Vista SP1 DVDs for its retail and volume licensing customers, said Zipkin.

Vista and Windows Server 2008 are closely aligned and are both very similar from an engineering point of view, with a 95 percent shared code base, said Bob Visse, senior director of marketing in the Windows Server Marketing Group.

Microsoft is working with ISV partners and hardware partners to help them build Server 2008 compatible applications. As part of this effort, Microsoft has established three tiers for ISVs to pledge their support for the Server 2008 platform, each with successively more stringent application testing requirements.

Microsoft currently has 80 ISVs in the highest tier and expects that number to jump to 225 within the next three months, said Visse, who expects the “vast majority” of Microsoft’s approximately 1000 ISV partners to extend their support for Server 2008.

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I’m going to ask you to use your imagination for a moment.

Think of a topic that interests you. Maybe it’s your favorite sport or hobby, for example. Now imagine that you’re searching the Internet for information on that topic.

The first article you come across is related to the topic you’re researching, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of value. It’s too general and full of pointless “fluff.” It makes obvious points that a third-grader could grasp. And it fails to offer any related information or resources.

The second article you come across is much more in-depth. It explains several aspects of your topic with refreshing insight. It is helpful and useful, and it links out to many related articles and resources on the subject.

If you could only bookmark one of these pages for future reference, which one would it be? It would be the second page, right?

You, like most people, would probably prefer the second page to the first. It’s an easy choice, and that’s because the author of the second article understood (and delivered) the most important concept of website content development — the value factor.

5 Benefits of High-Value Web Content

This kind of content has value for the reader, obviously. But it also benefits the author / publisher. Here are the top five benefits of creating high-value website content for your small business website:

1. It keeps people on your website longer.

2. It makes people more inclined to trust you.

3. It encourages readers to recommend the site to others.

4. It encourages other webmasters to link to your content.

5. It helps you improve your search engine ranking and visibility.

All of this sounds great, you say. But how do I create that kind of small business website content? Here are the top five guidelines for creating high-value website content.

 5 Steps to High-Value Web Content

1. Choose the right author.

2. Choose the right topic.

3. Address all sides of the topic.

4. Add supporting graphics, pictures, etc.

5. Link to related resources, both on your site and elsewhere.

Let’s look at each of these steps in greater detail.

1. Choose the Right Author

I once worked for a company who let their web programmers write the instructions for their online ordering process. Big mistake. If their audience were programmers as well, this might be okay. But most of their customers had limited technical skills. So when these people encountered online instructions such as “Validate parameters before advancing” … the customers would often become dead in the water.

This is a prime example of choosing the wrong author for web writing. Sure, the programmers’ input is important. After all, they built the thing. But they should not be the voice of customer guidance. A skilled web writer (someone with usability experience) would have “translated” these instructions to say something like “Please fill in all required information before moving to the next screen.”

Here’s the key to this. The best author for your small business website content is not always the person who knows the most about the product or service from a technical standpoint. Often, it’s best to have an in-house writer who plays the go-between role of “consumer advocate,” getting the information from one group and translating it for another group.

 2. Choose the Right Topic

If your small business only offers one product or service, then that will likely be the topic of your web content. In this case, I would focus on choosing the right angle as well. Don’t tell people what you want them to know — this is an outdated way of thinking about public information, especially when it comes to small business website content. Instead, find out what people want to know about the types of products you offer, and use your web content to address those questions or concerns.

If you are writing web content for a company that has many products or services, you will have to spend more time choosing topics first and choosing your angle second. In this case, it becomes more about topic organization than anything. Large websites with many topics are ideally suited for a category and sub-category system: These are our products >> And this is product ‘A’ >> And this is a web page that explains product ‘A’ in detail.

3. Address All Sides of the Topic

Whether you’re writing about one of your products, or you’re creating a tutorial of some kind, you need to cover all the angles. There’s nothing worse than website content that leaves the job only half-done, telling you why a certain thing is important but not pursuing that lead.

When you are close to a certain topic — as is the case with people who create a product or service — it’s easy to assume everyone else understands it as well as you do. But the opposite is usually true, so you need to explain all sides of a topic when you write content for your small business website.

Want to keep your pages relatively short for easy reading? You can do that while still offering complete information. That’s what hyperlinks are for!

4. Link to Related Resources

Here’s the key to developing great content for your small business website. Try to create authority documents that others in your field would link to and recommend to others. One of the key criteria for a resource document is that it links to plenty of supporting information, both on the same website and elsewhere on the web.

In addition to being good for your readers, this kind of useful content will make other webmasters more inclined to link to your website. This adds to your link “popularity” and can further improve the search engine ranking of your small business website.

When writing a particular web page, try to think of it as “the ultimate guide to [blank].” This is the first step to creating the kind of authority documents that eventually dominate the search engines and drive endless web traffic for the authors. But it’s rarely possible to create an “ultimate guide” to anything in just one page, so be liberal about linking to other sources on your own website and elsewhere (as long as they are not direct competitors).

5. Add Supporting Graphics, Pictures, Etc.

Reading online can be hard on the eyeballs. You can make the reader’s job easier in two ways. First, you can format your content appropriately for web reading (short paragraphs, narrow text columns, lots of bullet points, headers, sub-headers, etc.). Secondly, you can add supporting images and helpful graphics.

Well-placed graphics can improve website content in a number of ways. Images are more enticing than text upon first glance, so they can help attract and retain readers. They also help you clarify your message with visual reinforcement.

Conclusion

I have a motto I use regarding website content. “If it’s not worth putting online, don’t put it online.” This is my reminder to myself that I need to use the techniques outlined above to create superior website content. Because that’s the kind of content that leads to online success. Apply these lessons to your small business website and watch your own success increase!

About The Author
Brandon Cornett operates a web marketing firm in Austin, Texas and is a web writer at large for dozens of websites and blogs. Learn more by visiting http://www.austinseoguy.com.

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Until recently, Nokia’s software efforts have been perceived as the opposite of open: closed. Sure, the world’s largest cell-phone maker has participated in open-source mobile Linux projects like remote sensing. It’s also released a few Linux-based phones. But such initiatives have been far and few between.

To write programs for Nokia smartphones, software developers have had to learn ins-and-outs of Nokia-supported Symbian operating system. Nokia has exercised much control over development and charged hefty fees. That’s why so many programmers have flocked to Google’s Android, an open-source operating system for cell phones that was announced last fall. Android is free to use, and poses few restrictions.

But now, Nokia appears to be making more steps toward going open, too. Today, the company announced it acquired Trolltech, known for its open-source mobile software. This is the strongest indication yet that Nokia is empracing open source. And that could have huge implications for the future of mobile Linux and for Android.

With Nokia’s support, Trolltech may turn into a widely used mobile Linux platform — and further contribute to fragmentation of the Linux developer community. There are already more than 20 flavors of Linux. Android, the strongest of the bunch, was expected to unite Linux developers. Now, however, some developers that might have jumped onto Android may stick with Nokia.

Clearly, the mobile software battle is heating up.

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Ian Williams, vnunet.com 28 Jan 2008

The US market for mobile games will rise from less than $800m in 2007 to more than $3bn by 2012, according to analysts.

A report from Juniper Research suggests that around 18 million Americans download or rent mobile games at least once a year, and that this number is expected to increase sharply over the next five years.

Juniper attributes the rise to the introduction of free trial periods for subscription-based games, as well as improvements in the user interface of mobile phones and all-you-can-eat data packages.

“This ‘try before you buy’ strategy makes the customer more comfortable about purchasing a particular title,” said Dr Windsor Holden, the report’s author.

“But it also makes the customer more familiar with mobile gameplay and will provide further encouragement to seek out additional titles in the future.”

The research also predicts that around 30 per cent of mobile game downloads in the US will be ad-funded by 2012, and that the increasing sophistication of high-end games combined with improved form factor in handsets should enable publishers to increase retail price points.

However, growth in the US will still lag behind China, the Far East and Western Europe over the next five years.

The report also warned that the poor marketing of mobile titles means that many customers are frequently unaware of new releases.

Juniper urges publishers to focus on enhancing their portfolios of ‘lifestyle games’ as a means of expanding the mobile gaming demographic.

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Skyfire’s free mobile browser is meant to support everything a PC browser can, including Flash, QuickTime, JavaScript, and AJAX

By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service January 28, 2008

A growing set of developers is setting to work making Web browsing on a phone match the experience on a PC.

Skyfire, a startup in Mountain View, Calif., joined the fray on Monday when it unveiled a free browser intended to support everything a PC browser can. That includes Flash video, QuickTime, JavaScript, AJAX, and more, though not everything may be there right now, according to Nitin Bhandari, Skyfire’s CEO. The browser is now in a private beta test for U.S. users only. The software was demonstrated at the Demo conference in Palm Desert, Calif.

Apple’s iPhone changed the mobile browsing world last year when it drew a huge following with its Safari browser. Unlike most browsers for phones, it lets users view a full, standard Web page all at once and zoom in to make up for the small size of the screen, though it doesn’t support Flash video and some other standard Web features.

Meanwhile, more opportunities have opened up for third parties to get any sort of application onto a consumer’s mobile phone. Parts of Google’s Android development environment are already available to developers, and Apple is preparing a software development kit for the iPhone. Both Verizon and Sprint Nextel, two of the biggest U.S. operators, have outlined plans to allow any device and any application on mobile networks.

“The iPhone has pretty much settled the debate. People want a rich, full Web experience,” Skyfire’s Bhandari said. “There’s a lot of consciousness that that’s the bottom now, and everything now has to be there or above it.”

Since the phone’s June debut, Mozilla has started developing a mobile version of Firefox, which looks somewhat like mobile Safari in screenshots on Mozilla’s wiki. However, Mozilla has been vague about when that software will come out. Norwegian browser vendor Opera has its own mobile browser, Opera Mini.

Skyfire’s product will be set apart from Opera Mini and others by supporting the full browsing experience, Bhandari said. It does so by relieving the phone from some of the heavy lifting of presenting a Web page. In fact, a server transcodes every page into an efficient protocol that Skyfire has developed over the past 18 months, he said. The additional exchange of packets between phone and server to make that possible isn’t a problem, because the server can carry out tasks much faster than a phone, according to Bhandari.

“The delay added by the server is actually such a small percentage of the time we’re actually saving … that it’s actually a huge benefit in the end-user experience,” Bhandari said. Skyfire operates the servers in its own datacenter.

Skyfire can deliver full versions of popular Web sites, such as YouTube and ESPN, as demonstrated in a YouTube video. The zooming function, the critical tool for viewing full-size Web pages on a small screen, is different from the iPhone’s “pinch” and “unpinch” gestures. A gray box appears over part of the Web page, and users can size that box to cover the area of the page they want to see full-screen, then tap on it to zoom in, Bhandari said. The browser also features a search bar and a tab with featured links in categories including news, sports, and video.

The browser is available only for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 today, but a version for Symbian, as well as an international beta test, are coming later, Bhandari said. Skyfire might also develop versions for Android and for the iPhone once Apple’s SDK becomes available, he said. It is talking with handset makers and mobile operators about having the browser built into phones, but also sees search and advertising as possible revenue sources.

In addition to invited testers, a limited number of public users will be allowed to participate in the beta. They can sign up at Skyfire’s Web site.

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Analysts are alarmed at a perceived discrepancy in the figures in iPhone sales figures. Jonny Evans, Macworld

Analysts are mulling over Apple’s iPhone sales numbers and are alarmed at a perceived discrepancy in the figures.

Apple claims slightly over 3.7 million iPhones were sold in 2007 — yet AT&T this week revealed it ended the year with “just at or sightly under two million iPhone customers”.

That two million has been boosted somewhat by an estimated 300,000-400,000 sales in Europe, analysts believe.

The discrepancy is that the 3.7 million iPhones Apple says it has sold and the estimated 2.4 million sold by its network partners still leaves 1.3 million of the devices unaccounted for.

That implies that around one in three iPhones are being purchased in order to unlock the device for use on other networks and/or for use with unapproved third party applications.

While it’s possible some iPhones were sold over the Christmas period but not activated immediately as new users (perhaps) worked to cancel their existing mobile contracts, the discrepancy still implies an active market for unlocked iPhones.

Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook told analysts this week that the company believes the number of unlocked iPhones in the wild to be “significant,” but declined to furnish accurate figures.

Toni Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research cites these figures in order to claim a substantial market in unlocked iPhones, and speculates this news may also mean a build-up in iPhone inventory.

“It indicates end-user demand for iPhone is lower than many investors may think based on Apple’s sales figure — and it points to slower iPhone sales in the current quarter, since much of this inventory is likely to be drawn down,” the analyst explains.

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Not too long after Microsoft had released a developer build of the Windows 7 Milestone 1 release to a select few, review and opinion pieces started to leak onto Windows enthusiast sites by OEM employees or their beneficiaries. So it’s hardly surprising that now -just a few days later, the full DVD image has started to show up on a few torrent sites.

Anonymous pirates vying to snatch credit for the first Windows 7 torrent have only served to frustrate, with many of the down loaders later verifying the various submissions as fake zero byte ISO images, and while we haven’t been able to verify for ourselves if indeed a valid Win7 image has been leaked to the pirating community, it sure is stirring up a lot of interest in the past 24 hours!

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Plenty of change lies ahead in the area of offshore outsourcing, which has evolved from a little-used practice to a mature industry in less than 10 years. Here are five predictions for offshore outsourcing in 2008:

1) Businesses that use offshore outsourcing will devote more time and effort to ensuring the success of such projects. Occasional problems with bad software code, miscommunications, and high staff turnover haven’t been enough to turn companies away en masse from offshore outsourcing — many are too hooked on the personnel cost savings — but they’ve been enough to demand greater oversight on offshore deals. This also will have some companies working in closer partnership with their offshore providers.

2) More offshore work will go to Latin America, China, Eastern Europe, and other low-cost locations as India struggles to deal with its tightening IT talent pool. Service providers in India say they’re working hard on the problem, going as far as to retrain science graduates to become technologists and scouring the rural regions of India for talent. But these measures smack of desperation, and India’s talent problem isn’t going away anytime soon.

3) India IT salaries will continue their annual double-digit increases, rising perhaps even higher than the 15% range suggested by Indian service providers, but not so much that U.S. companies won’t continue to be attracted by the cost savings/skill level combo offered by Indian technologists.

4) India will decline as a location for telephone call center jobs for U.S.-based companies. People are impatient by nature, and even more so when on the phone with a customer service rep talking about a bill they owe or a problematic product they’ve purchased. Add even a slight language barrier, and you’ve got customers demanding to speak to managers and e-mailing complaints. Meanwhile, turnover rates for call center reps serving customers during U.S. daylight hours are high in India, since they’re night-time jobs there. Even high-level execs at India offshore firms have admitted to me that call center work is an increasingly unattractive business. Look for U.S. companies to bulk up call center staffs in rural, low-cost areas of the U.S. where labor is cheap, and in Canada, for their English-speaking customers.

5) If the economy tanks in the next year, offshore outsourcing will suddenly become a much more interesting topic on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. The U.S. unemployment rate for IT is still very healthy right now, about 2%, and most Web-based development skills are in high demand. But if a recession hits, layoffs may follow, and presidential candidates will be forced to be more definitive on the topic than they’ve been to date.

Read full article Posted by Mary Hayes Weier, Jan 1, 2008 11:25 AM

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Rumours are emerging that Nokia is in talks with Facebook to port the generally still-in-favour social network to its range of handsets. Sources have suggested that this could be as prominent a placement as the “YouTube” button is on Apple’s iPhone.

Facebook could benefit from Nokia’s advertising campaigns in retail outlets, and there’s even the possibility of Nokia “doing a Microsoft” and buying a stake in the young company.

If these rumours are based on even a smidgen of truth, then it marks another expansion of Nokia’s empire.

A senior Nokia executive is reported as saying, “There is talk of a partnership in the works… it’s safe to say we’re testing the waters and things still have to be worked out,” but, unsurprisingly, no official word from either company.

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By Carrie Hill, Search Engine Watch

Meta tags, links, metadata, content, relevancy, competition, and page title all affect page ranking. The HTML title tag, an element that tells searchers what your page is about, is often overlooked.

If you’re a regular student of SEO and search, you know how important titles are. Page titles can make or break search engine rankings for a small business Web site.

Crafting the perfect title tag is a lot of art, and a little bit of science. There are a variety of techniques — and many schools of thoughts. Let’s look at three types of page titles to see what works and what doesn’t.

An Unoptimized Title

I can’t tell you how many Web sites I visit with the page name or title as “home” or “prices.” What a horrible missed opportunity to use some great keyword phrases to rank your page for something that will actually sell your product.

I don’t think someone searching for “home” will want to buy pizza. So why optimize your page for the term “home?”

Spamalicious — the Word List

Great — a bunch of lower case words about pizza. This doesn’t do anything but tell the search engines you’re trying really hard to rank for a variety of terms related to pizza.

The first keyword is “pizza” — there are 134 million people competing for that term in Google. How many of those are your target audience? I’d guess about half of one percent.

Put a location qualifier next to your keyword phrase if you rely on a local market. If you don’t rely on a local market, think very hard about the feasibility of ranking for terms that are highly competitive. Is there a large list of long-tail terms that will be easier to rank for and will — when added together — bring just as much or more traffic as that one uber-competitive keyword phrase?

Beyond poor keyword choices for a page, many small business Web site owners miss the fact that not only is your page title a great way to tell the search engines what your page is about — it’s ad copy. That’s right — when you write a page title it shows up as the bold, blue, underlined header in the SERPs (define).

Results — Guaranteed With a Side Order of Call to Action!

This style is my personal favorite and very similar to how I write title tags for my clients and my own Web sites. Sometimes I’ll trim it down a bit. Sometimes I’ll just do something like “Order Brooklyn Style Pizza in Red Hook NOW and save 10 percent ” if the client is running a special.

Effectively using page titles as ad copy depends on spidering (define) frequency. Page titles don’t change instantly in search engines. Be very careful when featuring specials or one-time offers in title tags. You may not be able to remove the text from the results right away when the offer is over. If you’re willing to offer the special until the page is re-indexed, then go for it. Offering a “deal” and making it prominent in the search results is a great way to gain market share.

You may also consider adding your business name to the end of your title tag. If you have enough brand recognition in your area or niche, it’s important to capitalize on that. I have a client that gets more than 60 percent of their conversions based on brand recognition. Nearly all their title tags have their brand inserted so it shows in the SERPs.

The best parts of the third type of page title are the great keyword phrase and call to action. Remember, if you design your site based on keyword research, you can feature one keyword per page!

In this last example we’re accomplishing two important aspects of SEM (define). We’re telling the search engines what our page is about, and using some great ad copy in the SERPs.

A Real Life Example of a Page Title

Number one and number two will probably get some clicks — especially if they really luck out and have good positioning. It’s not all about optimization though.

There needs to be a blend between search engine friendly and user-friendly. Style number three is telling us exactly what our pizzeria offers and where. Those are two great selling points.

You’ll notice that our page titles have been shortened in a few instances. Google will only display about 63 characters, including spaces, in the title of a search engine result. Make sure your keyword and call to action come within that 63 character span.

I hope these examples will help do-it-yourselfers construct some killer page titles that will help with click-throughs and conversion on your small business Web site.

One last note: along with being search engine friendly, your page titles should also appeal to the eyes of your target market. If you have any questions about title tags, contact me

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By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

AT&T and the iPhone have gone corporate. Despite the opinion of many analysts, AT&T is now labeling the iPhone an Enterprise-class device. My question, as with my earlier AT&T SIM-only story is, why is this all that great again?

The reason I say this is because if you compare the data plans between the consumer and corporate plans, you’ll pay $25 more a month. Oh, wait, if you read the fine print, here’s the answer:

Qualified Corporate Responsibility Users and other corporate-liable users who activate an Enterprise Data Plan for iPhone by March 31, 2008 may be eligible to receive a service credit in the amount of $25 per month through December 31, 2008.

Waitasec, AT&T, that’s only until December, and I’m signing up for a two-year plan, right? Sigh. My guess is the reason for this announcement of “corporateness” may lie in the upcoming announcement of Lotus Notes on the iPhone.

At any rate, they needed something really exciting to talk about since there was no 3G iPhone at Macworld, right? Follow the links to compare the corporate and consumer plans.

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By Scott Buresh (c) 2008

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.

Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider commands and instances in which you might want to use them.

This meta command is one of the most common ones used – and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their index. However, all search engines do this by default anyway. Basically, if you want to put it in there for fun, be my guest, but this command is not giving you any special treatment. All search engines are going to index your page, unless you specifically tell them otherwise.

The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page, unless otherwise directed.

The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It’s important to note however that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.

When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don’t want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.

There are however some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site and you’ve created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.

As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center:

“Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages.”

In cases like these, it is acceptable to use the “no index” command on the dynamic version of the page, so that your content will not be treated as duplicate. You are not tricking all search engines, you’re just redirecting them.

This tag tells search engine spiders that it’s OK to go ahead and index a page and list it but that they shouldn’t follow any of the links that are on the page. This can be useful if, for example, you had some partners that requested a link on your site that you felt obligated to give, but you wanted to hold onto as much Page Rank as possible. Now this is of course between you and your personal god, but you would be able to in effect have a partners page, add the nofollow attribute to the meta tags, and basically not pass on any of your Page Rank to any of the sites to which you are linking. The nofollow command in effect tells all search engines that this is the end of the line.

Obviously, noindex and nofollow are powerful tags – and in combination, they can make a page and the subsequent pages to which it links invisible to nearly all search engines. This combination command tells search engine spiders, “Do not read this page; do not follow any of the links on this page; do not include this page in your index.”

This command has its beneficial uses. For example, it can be placed on pages on a site that have duplicate content for legitimate reasons. A website might have both a page for the United States and a page for England that cover the same product with exactly the same content. However, nearly all search engines would see this as duplicate content and could devalue both pages. So placing this command on one of them means that search engine spiders will walk on by and you won’t be penalized.

Finally, almost all search engines today, including Google and Yahoo, provide a cached version of a site alongside its listing that provides a snapshot of what the page used to look like. The noarchive tag, therefore, is available to be used in circumstances where there is content on your website that is of a timely nature and therefore that you might not necessarily want search engine spiders to cache for people to have access to moving forward.

For example, a business might run a one-time special that has a ridiculously low price to drum up some business while things are slow. The business will want to be able to shut that sale down as soon as sales are back up to a solid level. However, it is conceivable that someone could click on the cached version of the business’s site, see the old deal that was out there, and insist on getting it for themselves. By using the noarchive tag, you are telling search engine spiders, in effect, “This page is subject to frequent changes, and I don’t want my visitors to have access to some of this content at a later time.”

Conclusion

The commands discussed above are just a few of the ones in existence, and new ones are being added frequently. While nearly all search engines support these commands, there are still some that don’t. The ones in this article, however, are fairly universally understood by search engine spiders, no matter from where they originate. As more universal commands are introduced, I will write about them in future articles.

About The Author
Scott Buresh is the CEO of Medium Blue, which was recently named the number one search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld. Scott has contributed content to many publications including Building Your Business with Google For Dummies (Wiley, 2004), MarketingProfs, ZDNet, WebProNews, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. Medium Blue serves local and national clients, including Boston Scientific, DS Waters, and Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Visit MediumBlue.com to request a custom SEO guarantee based on your goals and your data.

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Here’s the primary thing on my mind as we begin 2008: If we, the search/online marketing industry, don’t do a better job of helping the small business owner understand and adopt the best practices of search marketing, we are doomed to irrelevance.

“Oh, but there’s no money in small businesses,” you say. Or, “small business owners are too busy to be good clients, they have too many other things on their minds.” I know it’s easy to dismiss small business clients as a “good fit for someone else,” and I know small businesses aren’t always good for your company’s bottom line. But before you disagree with me wholesale, let me explain why I think we need small businesses to understand and appreciate SEO and search marketing.

Your big clients will eventually disappear

If you read the In House columns here on Search Engine Land, you’ve probably noticed the authors making regular references to the “growing number of in-house SEOs” working for large companies. You may also recall the most recent SEMPO industry report, which shows that “in-house marketing programs continue to grow.” You can also look through the Internet Retailer 500, the magazine’s list of the biggest online retailers. In many of those business profiles, the search marketing provider goes by the name “In-house.” Your big clients are realizing the value of search marketing, and deciding to handle it internally.

Who’s going to be left to work with? Small business owners.

Small businesses are/will be increasingly interested in search marketing

Just last week, a MediaPost article said print Yellow Pages “will continue to bleed dollars to their various digital counterparts” in 2008.

Last year, Yellowpages.com opened 11 new sales offices across the U.S. because of “dynamic growth and rising demand for more local search advertising products.”

Greg Sterling wrote last year about the trend of real estate agents and brokers using online marketing, with search marketing being the most popular choice in that small business industry.

A couple months ago, Google said more than a million businesses have interacted with its Local Business Center.

It’s inevitable that small businesses will continue to be more interested in using the Internet as a marketing tool. But we have a real problem:

Finding accurate information about SEO and search marketing is tough

I can already hear your objections on this one. Yes, those of us inside the industry know exactly where to go to find certain types of information. We know the great link building writers, we know the great local search writers, and we know the great social media writers. But those of us who’ve spent many years working with small business clients also know that the average business owner has no idea that Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch exist. And the Google SERPs for things like seo information, seo help and seo articles are hit and miss. The reality is that there’s a lot of SEO noise online, and no guarantee that the small business owner looking for help will find anything of value.

So, since small business owners don’t know all the great industry resources, they’re likely to rely more on known, trusted sources like traditional media. It’s great when a USA Today writes about SEO and gets it right, but for every time that happens, it seems another Big Media outlet gets it wrong.

Earlier this month, BusinessWeek published an article that is so completely off the mark, it may have set search marketing back five years. Author Gene Marks throws RSS, blogs, SEO, PPC advertising (AdWords), online video, and more under the bus, calling them “overhyped and underwhelming” technologies “that don’t work.” It’s bad enough that such poor advice was given out on BusinessWeek.com; worse, the article was syndicated to MSN.com, where it no doubt reached an even larger audience of small business owners.

Ugh.

As small businesses continue to migrate online to find customers, if that article is the kind of information they find about SEO and search marketing, we’re in deep trouble. We need small businesses to understand what we do and to succeed when we do it for them, for our own benefit as much as theirs.

Matt McGee is the SEO Manager for Marchex, Inc., a search and media company offering search marketing services through its TrafficLeader subsidiary. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

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After publishing an invitation to Facebook to join the DataPortability Working Group January 4, we never thought that Facebook would accept it. Today changes everything you’ve ever thought about social-networking data and lock-in before, because today Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup

Google and Plaxo joining are a positive, however given that both have previously joined together for platforms such as OpenSocial it’s not that significant, but Facebook is another matter. On January 4 Michael sort of defended Facebook’s stance against Plaxo pulling data from Facebook on the grounds that “Facebook also has a very good reason for protecting email addresses - user privacy.” Today, by joining the DataPortability Working Group Facebook is embracing open standards and open access, and that is a huge fundamental change from its previous stance on being locked in to closed standards.

I spoke with the head of the DataPortability Group Chris Saad prior to this post (Chris is also the CEO of Faraday Media