eduMap widget

Review from the opera for widget... the author Fyrd explains about eduMap. eduMap provides a fun way to learn the location of countries, states and capitals. Includes multiple maps, high scores and different playing modes.

Always wanted to learn the location of each African country? How about capitals of U.S. states? Maybe you never had a chance to learn all the names of all independent European nations since 1991?
The eduMap widget provides a fun way to learn the location of countries, states and capitals. Select either a full continent or a subsection of countries, then be quizzed on their locations. In the default mode, just hover over a country or state and discover its name, capital, area and population.

Different quiz modes are available to help you lean in a variety of ways. High scores are recorded on your system, based on percentage correct and completion time. 100% SVG based, so you can resize the widget to whatever size is preferred without any quality loss.

Currently Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the USA are available. More maps may be added in the future.

Optional languages are English, Russian and Finnish.

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Blogging – Ways To Improve Visibility

Let’s say for the sake of argument that you have a business blog. You have participated in online forums in your industry and now want to pass along information in a more personally directed format.

Your blog is new and site visits are not as strong as you would like. You post a link to your blog in the signature line of forum posts, but you are still hoping more people will drop by.

Starting a business blog can be a bit like starting a website – it can take a while for it to gain a following or even for search engines to index and rank the blog site.

There are a couple of things you can do to improve the visibility of your business blogging missives.

1) Duplicate posts on one or more social media blog. This idea is useful when you have social media pages that include the ability to blog. Your presence on these sites may align you with a different audience than those who might visit your primary blogging site. In many cases you can cut and paste information and allow it to reach out to other potential customers.

With the linking capability in social media it is entirely possible your blog may be visited by those outside your network of friends as visitors click from one profile to the next in search of something interesting. Perhaps they will find something used on your social media blog.

2) Use your established connections on forums or message boards to your advantage. Beyond simply placing a link in the signature line of your forum posts make sure to see if there is a ‘water cooler’ or ‘open line’ section on your favorite forums. If so you have the capability of posting a summary or teaser in those general discussion areas with a link to your blog. This may resonate with those who are already familiar with your personality on the forum and they may be inclined to learn from your expertise. Make sure you abide by the rules of any forum you may use to implement this strategy.

You may encounter forums that do not allow outside links in posts or any posts that gives the hint of being business oriented. Know the rules of the forum before you utilize this strategy.

Your business blog can be an important way to reach out to others. This is true for those who may already know of your business as well as others who convey trust based on the sense of trust already extended by other forum members.

In essence you can use social media and forums to grow your blog presence as you wait for search engines to help make it easier for others to find you online.

The growth of business blogging would seem to be a strong indicator that this form of information marketing is not only a valuable resource, but also a great way to improve site traffic to your primary business site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies remain the most useful key in the visibility of any site, but while you wait why not use every available tool at your disposal. In this case that would be forum and social media for improved blogging visibility.

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SEO - An overview

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process by which the quality and volume of traffic can be improved on a search engine on the Internet. Normally when we search for a particular piece of information or data on any top search engine ranking the results we get, are presented in a serial order by the particular search engine. This presentation of the results is derived from what is called the ‘Algorithmic’ basis and the results that figure at the top of the order are the ones that would be visited more often.

A number of times the process of SEO could focus on searches that broadly range from ‘vertical search’ to ‘horizontal search’ or could be a very specific search. The process of SEO depends to a great extent on how the search engine has been designed to respond to specific searches. A search engine may have a particular set of search words or ‘Keywords’ that has been used by a very large number of visitors to a particular site on this search engine. In this case the designers of the search engine would invariably give a very high priority to this particular set of keywords that would display the website in a privileged position in the top three or top five results on the search engine.

Now, although certain search engines do have somewhat different algorithms that are liable to change sometimes, it has been found that all engines more or less similarly appreciate the information that searchers look for, such as:

Simple, clean and implicit search engine friendly web site design

Carefully prepared, perceptive direction

Descriptive and well-written text

Tag content that that optimizes identification of relevant keywords

Accurate links that extend the scope of the search

It is true that good content that provides relevant information to the visitor to the site utilizing keyword phrases should be the objective of all contents that makes its way to the World Wide Web. Therefore a professional content writer and not SEO, is what is vital for that aspect of the job. In fact most people would rather be presented with information they require in clear, concise language, right on the main page of the site they are visiting.

Normally a decent search engine strategy takes up to a year to work although it might also work with minimal effort for a long time although it might not perform well in the beginning. If the site does not provide the visitors with what they want then it might never perform at all. Therefore while designing a site, it is important to remember that for the site to be up on the World Wide Web it will first be read by search engines that are machines. On the other hand, any content designed specifically for machine-readability could turn off a real visitor who is not interested in how the pages appear to a machine. Hence SEO is basically a question of balance.

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SEO Step One Of Ten: Keyword Research

The steps were:

1.Keyword Selection
2.Content Creation
3.Site Structure
4.Optimization
5.Internal Linking
6.Human Testing
7.Submissions
8.Link Building
9.Monitoring
10.The Extras (all those things that didn’t fit in the first 9 steps)

Well in case you’ve been asleep for the last few years on in case you’ve just recently joined us in the SEO-realm, I – along with some of my good friends in the web marketing world – have decided to re-write the series with new information and new perspectives.

The New Series

In our updated series we’ll be dropping some of the articles and adding others to account for changes in the industry. Another major change in this series is that we’re going to compliment it with a weekly segment on Webmaster Radio’s Webcology (http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Search-Engine-Optimization/Webcology/) on Thursday afternoon at 2PM EST where we’ll be conducting interviews and discussing tools with their manufacturers to help our readers and listeners make the most of this information. If you miss the show, you can always download the podcast free of charge afterwards.

The 10 steps covered in this series will be:

1.Keyword Research & Selection
2.Competition Analysis
3.Site Structure
4.Content Optimization
5.Link Building
6.Social Media
7.PPC
8.Statistics Analysis
9.Conversion Optimization
10.Keeping It Up

Step One: Keyword Research & Selection
There are two times in a site’s life when keyword research is conducted – when researching a site to rank in the organic results on the search engines and when researching keywords for a PPC campaign. In our article today we’re going to focus on the former and save the research involved with PPC campaigns for step seven in this series.

So we’ve got the topic down to “just” keyword research and selection for organic SEO campaigns – from there the topic once again gets split into a variety of areas. Those that we will cover here are:

The raw data
Studying those who’ve gone before
Understanding your choices

The Raw Data

The raw data is the raw estimated searches/day that you can expect a phrase to get on the major search engines. There are a number of tools you can use to compile this information. Here are some of the more commonly used:

Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/)
Yahoo!’s keyword suggestion tool. It’s fast and it’s free but it has some serious drawbacks. The tool often mixes singular, plural and common misspellings into one so it could lead you astray (admittedly it’s gotten much better lately but still far from perfect).

Is a bed and breakfast in Banff, BC better to target “banff accommodation” or “banff accommodations”. How about the very common misspelling “Banff accomodations”? That said, it’s based on easily the largest pool of search data made available in this way which gives it a huge edge in accuracy based on the pool of data it’s collecting from.

WordTracker (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/resources/recommended/wordtracker.htm)
WordTracker is easily one of the most popular of the paid keyword research tools. It solves the problem with the singular vs plural vs misspellings however the data it accesses is from a few meta engines and is not as comprehensive as one might like.

They offer a free trial and have options to pay for just a day or up to a year so they provide options for people who simply need it for a quick round of research on one site to SEO firms who need it on a daily bases. It sells for $59/mth.

Keyword Discovery (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/resources/recommended/keyword-discovery.htm)
This tool is very similar to WordTracker in the advantages/disadvantages category. Better specification of keywords, lower pool of data to base them on. I personally prefer Keyword Discovery simply for some of the features and the ability to export data for clients to view easily. Of course, that could well be due to my increased experience with it.

They have a free trial as well and it sells for $69/mth.

Aaron Wall’s Summary (http://www.seobook.com/archives/001013.shtml)
Noted above are some of the most popular tools and the ones I’ve used the most. There are some other tools definitely worth taking a peek at. Aaron Wall did a great summary on his site of the major tools, their pros and cons, etc. Definitely worth taking a peek at. Admittedly it’s a couple years old so some of the features have changed a bit but most of it is still valid and accurate.

Now What ...

Now that we’ve looked at the tools, let’s take a look at what we’re supposed to do with them. As noted, we'll cover how to use these tools when launching or updating a PPC campaign in a future article, however there are still a few areas and considerations that we need to consider here.

So let's get started ...

In case no one told you – size doesn't matter. It's not how big it is, it's who's using it. Let's use as an example a phrase we at Beanstalk targetted and that's the phrases “search engine positioning”. At first this was our big phrase which now gets 7,689 estimated searches/mth (a bit higher than it was back then). “search engine positioning services” gets a lowly 2,636 searches/mth. Of course we should be targeting the one with the higher number of searches (or so I thought).

Once we have attained top 3 rankings for both I started looking through my stats and setting up filters for conversion (forms filled out and visits to our contact page). People who entered “search engine positioning” were sure interested in our blog and articles but only those who added the word “services” contacted us. And so the big phrase was abandoned as a target and we began focusing on what I refer to as “buy phrases”. So bigger isn't better if the people you want are searching using phrases with a lower search volume.

There's another time when bigger isn't better. Which of those two phrases do you suppose we ranked for first? If you guessed the services phrase then you're right. When you launch a new website (which we had) you're likely up against sites that have been around for a while, have some solid backlinks and a good number of pages. You're not going to want to go up against them for the top phrases out of the gate. Choosing to go with phrases that are lower in search volume and lower in competition will almost always result in higher rankings faster, put some money back in your pocket and ready you to go for the bigger phrases.

It's here that the model we followed works well. When you're selecting your short term and long term targets it's wise to choose phrases with the same root keywords (“search engine positioning” and “search engine positioning services” for example). This basically enables you to work towards your long term goals during link building for your short term targets. And who doesn't like to kill two birds with one stone? Or perhaps you have all the time in the world and you're one of those people who likes nothing more than working on developing incoming links.

Which brings us to …

Studying Those Who’ve Gone Before

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let's just hang onto that thought while we research what those who are successful in your industry are targeting in order to glean some insight into what works.

I've recently discovered (much to my pleasure) a very cool tool that, while a bit pricey for some, simplified MANY of the processes of keyword research, tracking and competitor keyword dissection. A company called AdGooroo (http://www.adgooroo.com/) has created what I've now discovered to be an awesome keyword tracking tool (I'd call it keyword research but it does a lot more than list off search phrases). The tool allows you to do the generic keyword research that we're all used to with the same limitations as the tools above (i.e. Google doesn't hand out their search keyphrase volumes) but that's just the first step.

They then take a look at your competitors on both the organic and PPC results, figure out what they're ranking for and bidding on and provides some great reports on saturation levels, competition levels, and a lot more. With this in hand you can then begin to analyze how they're ranking (that'll be covered next week in our article on competition analysis).

The folks at AdGooroo also store historical information so you can look back over trends in the past and compare that to what you see now. As noted, a bit pricey for some but worth it for those who can afford to know this level of information on who's doing what and what you should be doing.

I should also note that I’m experienced in their SEM Insight product which costs $399/mth. They also do offer AdGooroo Express which has a lot of the same feature (but missing a lot of the ones I personally feel can give a researcher a HUGE jump on their competitors). The Express version however sells at $89/mth so far more affordable for some. And like all my favorite tools, they provide a free trial. :)

But if you can't afford that level of information you'll want to run ranking reports on all your top competitors (you likely know who these are but if you don't – they're the ones who rank in the top 10 for the most competitive phrases). You can either do this manually or use a reporting tool such as WebPosition Gold (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/resources/recommended/webposition.htm - again, has a free trail).

If you find weaker sites ranking for large numbers of phrases, you know who to watch (again, we'll get into this more next week). The only problem with this method is that you can only think of what you can think of. The site might be ranking for phrases you never thought to look into and which, in knowing, might provide some great insight into additional targets and tactics. Of course, you might well be from an industry with very obvious and defined keywords.

Understanding Your Choices

So now you've got choices to make. You've got a list of perhaps hundreds of keywords and you need to shorten that list down. The number of phrase you target will only be limited by your site and the amount of time you have to dedicate to it.

You will likely need to pare down your choices to those that will produce the fastest and highest ROI possible. This will likely be the phrases that provide the lowest competition levels for the highest searched “buy phrases”. Once you have attained these rankings you can move on.

The alternative is to go for the gold and target the biggest phrases in your industry. This will take longer (99% of the time) but might be necessary if there are no suitable secondary phrases. In this event you have to ready yourself for a slow rise to the top and a longer period of stagnant traffic with a big return (hopefully) at the end.

Another major choice you'll have to make (especially if you have a large number of potential phrases) is whether to start out with a PPC campaign for the traffic or to test keyword phrases for an organic promotion. While these will be covered in more detail in part 7, if you just can't wait you can find a past article on the subject titled “Using PPC To Maximize Your Search Engine Positioning ROI” (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/articles/ppc/4roi.htm).

More Info On This Series

As noted but worth mentioning again, this article series is being supplemented with a weekly show on WebmasterRadio.fm. Be sure to tune in or download the podcast to get the full information and hear some great interviews with the tool makers and experts.

Next week the topic will be competition analysis and will be written by StepForth, Inc. author and owner Ross Dunn. Ross will of course be on the show with us next Thursday along with some great guests.

Continue read...“SEO Step One Of Ten: Keyword Research”  »»

Good Website Content

Reading a website is not similar to reading a book or a newspaper, therefore before you start spilling money on campaigns be sure your site is built in accordance with internet writing standards. Lets talk about few simple rules you don't want to break when building a website:

Don't waste your visitors time

Time is money. Most people decide whether they are interested in what the website has to offer in just to seconds. Therefore make sure your landing page provides the most crucial and appealing information about your business.

Number one time waster is a heavy loading pages with lot's of flash animations and pictures. Make sure your web pages are not too heavy otherwise you might loose your visitors before they entered your website.

Most of the visitors need to find what they are looking for fast, otherwise they look for it elsewhere. As a webmaster you must make sure your data is well categorizes and divided to relevant pages , categories, headlines and sub-titles. A visitor must be able to navigate your website easily and successfully.

Avoid too much "Special affects"

By this I mean don't include too much flash movies and avoid using music if you don't have to. As we mentioned earlier, Flash has a large loading time which damages viewer experience, besides too much flash may be annoying and search engines can't read it.

Music is a great thing, but somehow music and websites do not fit too well. If you want to put some background tune anyway, make sure a user can silence it quickly and easily. Or in contrary , let the user click "Play" and begin the music when he decides.

Pop-ups and new pages

If you have links in your site , I strongly advise you not to use the pop-up option and not to open these links in new window. Seemingly pop-ups and new windows are a very good idea if we don't want the visitor to navigate from our website but many years of experience shows that users prefer to click "Back" buttons. As to pop-ups , most of browsers tend to block them , and you don't want to waste your viewer time on enabling pop-ups.

Text

Use standard fonts which are supported by all browsers, like Arial and Times New Roman. You don't want your viewers to get gibberish and go away from your website. Don't use very small or very large fonts . You don't want your pages to smear for miles and you don't want to scare away people with poor vision .

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