Big Numbers in Downloads and Domain Names

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:23:35 GMT

You may have heard the news that iTunes has hit the 10 billion (with a "b") mark in number of songs downloaded. Sales began in 2003. That's an average pace of more than 1.4 billion downloads a year. Considering that a typical single song retails for $0.99 on iTunes (likely higher than average price, as many albums with more than ten songs go for $9.99), I thought, "Wow, that's about $10 billion in sales!" Well, yes and no. It's only $9.9 billion in sales--$100 million short of $10 billion. I sometimes tend to think that one decimal place, one hundredth, is "close," and in a sense, $9.9 billion is close to $10 billion. In another sense, $100 million is a lot of money standing on its own.

This reminds me of a point made at a trademark infringement trial a few years ago. A lawyer (not me) asked a business owner whether a production cost difference of a few pennies per piece part was a big deal--hoping to make the point that it was insubstantial. The owner replied, "It's a big deal when I'm ordering hundreds of thousands of parts." All of this, of course, is not new. I recall learning about economies of scale in my 10th grade Economics class, though the lesson obviously continues to impress.

But here is another big number to consider: the folks over at FairWinds recently discovered a company that was losing 47 million initial web impressions to typosquatting domain names. Josh Bourne has a recent post at the Domain Name Strategy blog discussing this and some related SEO (search engine optimization) issues, and it is worth a read.

Pay attention to how those little things add up!

Effective Blog Writing for Search Engine Optimization: Webinar recording

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:36:47 GMT

Last week's webinar on Effective Blog Writing for Search Engine Optimization drew over 150 attendees, many of whom stayed through despite some delay and technical difficulties.

We've been able to re-do the screencast and recording of this webinar for those who couldn't attend, or for those who wanted to revisit some of the topics discussed.

Some of the points covered included:

How the Search Engines "See" Your Posts
Writing Effective Post Titles
Writing Search-Friendly Articles
Where to Get Article Ideas that Win
5 ways to Screw up your posts

This webinar will also be posted along with our other recorded webinars on the LexBlog support site.

If you had any additional questions about writing for search, feel free to contact our Helpdesk at support@lexblog.com or at 1-800-913-0988. And stay tuned for more information about our next client webinar next month.

Effective Blog Writing for Search Engine Optimization: LexBlog Network Webinar

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:00:01 GMT

If you’re a part of the online conversation, you know it's hard to escape the term “SEO” – search engine optimization.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to appear high in searches for your topic. But how do you do it without sacrificing quality content and productive engagement? Keyword stuffing or trying to outwit the search engines will backfire and cause more harm than benefit.

In our next webinar, exclusively for members of the LexBlog Network, I’ll have a dialogue with LexBlog's Jake Ludington about Effective Blog Writing for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

In addition to being our Director of Product Development and Technology, Jake built a blogging business on Search. His articles on digital media solutions consistently rank in the top 3 posts on Google for the topic. Part of Jake's success in this area is his ability to write to effectively rank for key search terms.

This webinar will be held Thursday, February 18, at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET. We’ll cover:

How the Search Engines "See" Your Posts
Writing Effective Post Titles
Writing Search-Friendly Articles
Where to Get Article Ideas that Win
5 ways to Screw up your posts

Please visit our Event Center to register for this webinar. If you need the password, email our HelpDesk or contact a member of our Author Services team at 1-800-913-0988.

Additionally, if you have any specific questions you'd like us to address in the webinar, please post them in the comment section below or email them to our Editorial Manager, Lisa Kennelly. And if you'd like your blog to be one of the ones we use as an example during the webinar, feel free to volunteer as well.

The SEO Value of Internal Website Links

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:43:00 GMT

Provides some tips on using internal links to boost search engine rankings for individual site pages.

In the world of SEO, there's always a heavy focus on developing inbound links from third party sites. This is good, but what marketers often forget is that internal links within a website can also help search engine rankings. In a recent article, MarketingSherpa spoke with Eric Ward, one of the search industry’s top linking experts, about how to use internal links to improve SEO.

Some key points:

Establish benchmarks for testing: First and foremost, Ward stresses the importance of developing traffic baselines showing, for example, the amount of traffic coming to various pages on your website that you deem important. The baseline numbers will help you measure the impact of changes you may later wish to make.

Tweak anchor text: The hyperlinked text of a link -- its anchor text -- helps signal to search engines what type of content is on the destination page. Using your target keywords in the anchor text of on-site links can boost the destination pages’ performance in searches for those keywords. In particular, focus on the anchor text being used on your homepage to direct visitors to important internal pages.

Boost traffic to lagging pages: you may find there are pages on your website that you want visitors to browse, but which are lagging in performance. Internal links from more popular pages on your website can help boost traffic on lagging content that is nevertheless important to you from a marketing standpoint.

Click here to read the full article (subscription required).

SEO Cited as the Number One Online Marketing Tactic in Forbes Study

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:55:30 GMT

Discusses study finding that SEO is the number one online marketing tactic.

A recent Forbes study found that the number one online marketing tactic for generating sales online was search engine optimization (SEO). There was some discrepancy concerning the second most effective tactic: smaller marketers preferred email newsletters, while larger companies preferred pay-per-click advertising (with email marketing being a close third). While law firms don't close sales online, but simply generate leads, the article highlights the importance of making sure your firm has a strong SEO and email marketing program.

Google Customized Search Results

Mon, 25 May 2009 17:55:42 GMT

One of the major changes in Google over the past few months is the increased implementation of customized search results. Publicized in July 2008 on the Official Google Blog, customized or personalized search results deliver website listings according to the searcher’s location, past & recent history. As Google states in some of [...]

Maximizing your online presence

dcanton@harrisonpensa.com (David Canton) — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:15:29 GMT

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today. It reads as follows: That was the title of a presentation I attended this morning at the London TechAlliance breakfast club series. David Ciccarelli of Voices.com was the presenter. He is well qualified to present, as he has built his business using these methods. Voices.com is interesting in [...]

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today. It reads as follows:

That was the title of a presentation I attended this morning at the London TechAlliance breakfast club series.

David Ciccarelli of Voices.com was the presenter. He is well qualified to present, as he has built his business using these methods. Voices.com is interesting in itself. It is essentially a job mart for voice actors that puts together voice actors with those needing their services. As you will see from their web site, they have an impressive client list.

Tutorial: SEO Friendly Flash Intro

info@paperstreet.com (Raúl José) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:12:57 GMT

A flash animated intro that doesn’t hurt your SEO efforts, sounds preposterous right? With a little elbow grease, some out-of-the-box thinking, and a bit of JavaScript anything is possible. Problem Flash intros have been labeled a lot of negative things in the past 10 years; unnecessary, unusable, and bad for SEO. We agree and each point deserves [...]

A flash animated intro that doesn’t hurt your SEO efforts, sounds preposterous right? With a little elbow grease, some out-of-the-box thinking, and a bit of JavaScript anything is possible.

Problem

Flash intros have been labeled a lot of negative things in the past 10 years; unnecessary, unusable, and bad for SEO. We agree and each point deserves its own article. However, the 3^rd and most important point (bad for SEO) is no longer true.

PaperStreet was approached with a client who wanted a Flash intro, and we all cringed. We tried to talk them out of it, tried to educate, but alas, a Flash intro is what they wanted.

We always look out for SEO when we develop and design. Instead of giving up, we brainstormed and came up with a very clever solution to this always aggravating issue.

Solution

In summary, what we came up with was to take a DIV and overlay it 100% width and 100% height over the entire index of the website on a higher z-index. Then pop in the flash intro like any normal flash integration. Of course the clever part was pretty simple in the end, we made a JavaScript function that faded out the div the flash was on and set its display property to none. We placed a call back at the end of the flash to reference the JS to run the function.

Bam! A Search Engine Friendly Flash Intro.

See an interactive demo here at http://www.robbinslawllc.com/.

Here is the play-by-play.

Step 1 - XHTML/CSS Markup

100% by 100% div on needs to be placed with the flash embed code in it…

Now the CSS… 100% height and 100% width with a z-index higher than the wrapper of your site. I added absolute positioning to be 0 on all accounts to force it for all browsers; although better browsers don’t need this fix.

#overlay {
width:100%;
height:100%;
background:#fff;
z-index:9999;
position: absolute;
top: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0; left: 0;
}

With this you should see the flash on the site now. This is the minimum to get it on the site. You can mess around with the styles to get it centered and whatever design you need.

Step 2 - JavaScript

We’re going to need the Jquery library for my example, then this simple Javascript markup.

All we’re doing here is fading out the div called #overlay. Jquery understands to dynamically set the display property to none when the fading is complete.

Step 3 - JavaScript callback from Flash

Almost there! All that’s left is to get into your FLA and on the last frame call the JavaScript function through the getURL function. Make sure you stop the flash before you call the Javascript or you can get all sorts of weird issues…

stop();
getURL(”javascript:closeHelpDiv()”);

That’s all there is to it, a relatively simple solution to a complex problem.

Step 4 - Optional PHP session integration

To overcome the usability perspective of why people dislike Flash intros we installed a PHP Session. This basically tells your computer that you’ve visited already and not to show you the flash. All you have to do is place this code around the flash overlay div. Feel free to use a Cookie if you do not like Sessions.

<?php
// Wrap this around the Flash, Start the Flash on First Load, Set Visited to 1
if ($_SESSION['visited'] != “1″) {
$_SESSION['visited'] = ‘1′;
?>
<div id=”overlay”>
</div>
<?php } ?>

…and of course a session start in the beginning of your markup above the opening <html> tag.

<?php session_start(); ?>

SEO Results

I’m sure all you SEO gurus want some hard results? For our client, Robbins Law LLC, we are targeting two specific phrases and in the past months have achieved our goals. We are of course working on improving rankings overall, but for the purpose of this article its proof that the technique works.

#1 for Atlanta Litigation Attorney

#4 for Atlanta Trial Lawyer (Working on improving that)

More Proof? What about Google’s cache?

It seems Google will cache this content. Yes, the cache shows the Flash into and not the actual text. However, look at the source code and you can see the content DIVs with actual SEO text.

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:aATPEOU0HvwJ:www.robbinslawllc.com/+atlanta+litigation+attorney&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Conclusion

Generally PaperStreet does not recommend Flash intros. In fact we have written articles about why not to use them. However, sometimes Flash intros are required. On the right website, with the right theme, it can be very informative and SEO friendly.

Keep the flash short, provide a skip button, a session setting, use this SEO technique, and no one should complain. For a first time viewer to see an attractive flash intro, it can make a very large impact, keep the client happy and make for great SEO results.

Copyright and Defamation Issues with Social Media and Politics

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:06:35 GMT

I gave a talk earlier today on the use of social media in politics, focusing on the Canadian scene, at the Miles S. Nadal Management Centre. Issues of copyright, including the use of YouTube, are discussed, as well as social media alternatives to defamation actions. Social Media And Politics in Canada (4/21/09) Audio of the talk available here [...]

I gave a talk earlier today on the use of social media in politics, focusing on the Canadian scene, at the Miles S. Nadal Management Centre.

Issues of copyright, including the use of YouTube, are discussed, as well as social media alternatives to defamation actions.

Social Media And Politics in Canada (4/21/09)

Audio of the talk available here until a Slide Cast can be set up.

SEO - 10 Things On My Wish/Gripe List

info@paperstreet.com (Raúl José) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:06:01 GMT

Picked up by SEOMoz.org on one of my articles. http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/seo-10-things-on-my-wish-gripe-list Check it out.

Picked up by SEOMoz.org on one of my articles.

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/seo-10-things-on-my-wish-gripe-list

Check it out.

Free (rare) Webinar on Search Engine Optimization for Lawyers

mark@avvo.com (Mark Britton) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:06:38 GMT

SEO for Lawyers This webinar will be on Friday April 24 at 1:00 pm PST focusing on SEO Practices for Lawyers (Register) and will be presented by Conrad Saam, our Senior Marketing Manager. Here at Avvo, we have been fielding calls and emails about SEO best practices and have decided to put together best practices into an [...]

SEO for Lawyers

This webinar will be on Friday April 24 at 1:00 pm PST focusing on SEO Practices for Lawyers (Register) and will be presented by Conrad Saam, our Senior Marketing Manager.

Here at Avvo, we have been fielding calls and emails about SEO best practices and have decided to put together best practices into an hour long presentation. The webinar is an introduction to SEO for the solo and small legal firm delivered in (mostly) non-technical jargon. The hour long session will:

Review SEO fundamentals
Uncover challenges and opportunities unique to the small law firm
Highlight common mistakes
Reveal unethical practices which may get your site penalized
Cover free and easy to use tools vital to SEO success
End with 10 things you can do in under 10 minutes to improve your site’s SEO performance

YouTube

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:03:47 GMT

Thought I’d share some choice video from TechShow 2009 featuring all 4 of the Best of Show winners that I wrote up in TechnoLawyer, plus interviews with some of my heroes such as Bob Ambrogi, Jay Funeberg, and Kevin O’Keefe, as well as sightings of legal blogging all-stars like Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighelle. I’m still [...]

NTEN Offers Free Webinars

kbladow@gmail.com (Kate Bladow) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network, has several upcoming free webinars. Two are part of their ongoing Ask the Expert series, which are free for NTEN members.

Ask the Expert - Michael Schreiber on Technology Planning in Today's Economy -April 21, 2009 at 2 pm Eastern/11 am Pacific
Ask the Expert - Mal Warwick on Fundraising When Money Is Tight - May 19, 2009 at 2 pm Eastern/11 am Pacific

Additionally, twelve sessions from the sold-out Nonprofit Technology Conference are being made available live and are free for everyone. (Check out more ways to participate in the NTC without leaving your office.)

Monday, April 27

1:30 pm Eastern/10:30 am Pacific

4:30 pm Eastern/1:30 pm Pacific

6:30 pm Eastern/3:30 pm Pacific

Tuesday, April 28

1:30 pm Eastern/10:30 am Pacific

4:30 pm Eastern/1:30 pm Pacific

6:30 pm Eastern/3:30 pm Pacific

Enjoy! - K

ABA TechShow 2009

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:10:13 GMT

This was my 10th year at ABA Technology Show in Chicago. This year was particularly cool. Here’s why: Meeting The Heavies: To me, seeing people like Dennis Kennedy, Tom Mighelle, Bob Ambrogi, Jim Calloway, Kevin O’Keefe, Brett Burney, Andy Atkins, Jay Foonberg (!) and the rest of my pretend blog friends … I mean pretend LinkedIn [...]

How Important is Page 1 Rankings in Search?

info@paperstreet.com (Raúl José) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:09:06 GMT

It’s very important to rank high. We are using the new Google Analytics Filter to see real time statistics of our search results. Top Rankings We have always ranked high for various terms, like “law firm web design”, “lawyer web design”, “Fort Lauderdale web design”, etc. We have always noticed a difference in inquiries when we have [...]

It’s very important to rank high. We are using the new Google Analytics Filter to see real time statistics of our search results.

Top Rankings
We have always ranked high for various terms, like “law firm web design”, “lawyer web design”, “Fort Lauderdale web design”, etc. We have always noticed a difference in inquiries when we have either risen in rankings from page 2 to page 1, or vice-versa a drop in inquiries. However, we now have proof that rankings matter and bring in quality traffic. I analyzed our Google Analytics from March 25 to April 1 (one week).

Raw Statistics
Here is the data of ONLY search traffic driven to our site:

Page 1 Visitors - 1,021

Page 2 and beyond Visitors - 56

Analysis
Suffice it to say that is a HUGE differential. I thought it would be a 80% to 20% breakdown, but this is a whopping 95% to 5% difference. Even more telling is the page 2 and beyond search terms are very odd inquiries, very such as:

firefox “”network timeout”" “”the site”" test | page: 3
emails sent per day law | page: 3

I guess people get desperate when they get down to page 2, 3, 4, or even 100 (yes we had a visitor from page 100).

Conclusion
Basically, you can increase your sites traffic by 20 times simply getting Page 1 rankings in search. Search matters and you should always consider SEO as part of your web presence plan. Get your SEO consultant to install Google Analytics and the Filter for Conversion Tracking and see what traffic is coming into your site and from what page.

Importance of a Blog: SEO, Credibility, Authority and Usability.

info@paperstreet.com (Raúl José) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:20:49 GMT

Blogging has been to the web what baseball has been to America for centuries; blogging is the web’s favorite past time. Since the first online blogging “software”, Open Diary, spawned from forums in 1998 people have been posting their opinions about everything and anything they can think of. Recently blogs have leapt great distances. Not [...]

Recently blogs have leapt great distances. Not only spreading opinion (but thanks to search engines like Google) they have also become the most cost effective marketing tool in recent history. A blog is relatively inexpensive to set up compared to traditional marketing venues such as Print, TV, or even Pay-per-click marketing.

SEO purposes of blogs:

Blogs with keyword rich language can rank high in Google results, and even boost your overall website’s Page Rank.
Each blog post fills Google with relevant keywords that are used in daily searches by ordinary people using ordinary language.
Each blog post adds one more page to your site. Google tends to rank its sites based on “the best available resource” for that topic. More Relevant Content = Better Resource.

With consistent additions, blogs not only rapidly increase your site’s search engine rankings and fill Google’s database with limitless possibilities of content but also gives your site something that some feel is even more important; usability. All without paying your web designer an hourly rate to make new pages of content. Companies hire usability specialists at over $150,000+ a year to review and improve the usability of their site; which in turn results in more inquires; which then transfers hopefully to more fiscal transactions. This is your FREE $150,000 tip.

Blogs are great for credibility, authority and usability.

Credibility: Speaking to your visitors as if you were having a face to face conversation gives people a sense of who you are; it brings a humane aspect to your company. People tend to hire those people who they can trust.
Authority: You can become a gatekeeper of information in your practice through a well written blog. You can become the authority expert and go to resource.
Usability: Blogs statistically improve your user’s time on your site, which directly correlates to the fact that… More time on your site = Better chance of inquiring for your services.

Hopefully by now you can see the benefits of a blog for your company. We, at PaperStreet Web Design, have been designing, developing, and managing blogs for companies internationally. Check out some of the blogs we’ve done in our Portfolio.

2 Free Tools to Check Your Law Firm Website for Broken Links and Duplicate Content

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 07:00:46 GMT

Free tools to check for broken links and duplicate content

Loren Baker at Daily SEO Tip recommends checking your website for broken links as an important step towards improved SEO. He says that "if your site delivers error pages or links to non-existent pages or files on your server, then search engines like Google are going to consider your site as being “under construction“, and therefore not being useful or relevant to the human user.

Conversely, Barker observes that:

"Working on client SEO accounts, I have run into numerous issues where fixing some internal broken links, outbound links, and making sure all of the files on the server are working have boosted a site ranking from pages 3 or 4, to page one."

Baker suggests using Xenu's Link Sleuth to find broken links. Xenu crawls a site much like a search engine spider does and identifies numerous issues, including broken links, duplicate content, broken images and multimedia files, images that lack "alt" attributes, images and files that may take undue amounts of time to load, and problems with redirected pages on the site.

Baker also recommends looking for duplicate content on sites since Google frowns on this. One free tool for this purpose is Virante Duplicate Content, which offers a simple diagnosis of a site that reveals common www vs. non-www content, the current cache stored by Google, default page errors, incorrect 404 pages, and supplemental pages existing in Google's index.

SEO Tip #10: "Click here" is SO 1999

heidisogn@comcast.net (Heidi Sogn) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:41:52 GMT

I was just on a web site and it seemed like every few lines said, “click here for more information” and it got me thinking about 1) how distracting it was when reading the content, and 2) what a missed SEO opportunity.

There was a time when people needed to be guided as to where they needed to click for more information. But that time has passed. Now readers know that when the text is a different color and/or underlined, it means that it’s a link to more information. What’s more, search engines pay more attention to word and phrases that are hyperlinked. As a double bonus, these words and phrases are easy to visually scan and will draw people’s attention. See, made you look didn’t I?

Here’s my challenge to you. Do a search on your own website for the words “click here” and then see if you can rewrite the content to incorporate the hyperlink directly for 90% of the occurrences. I’ll admit, there are times where it’s unavoidable but I’d be willing to bet the majority of the time there are better, more SEO-friendly content alternatives. Seriously, give it a try. Your SERP will thank you!

Twitter & Facebook Comments-Can They Be Used Against You?

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:07:30 GMT

http://www.oginski-law.com

Listen in as Gerry Oginski, an experienced New York negligence, wrongful death, medical malpractice & accident trial lawyer practicing law in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Long Island, Staten Island, Nassau & Suffolk explains whether comments that you make on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace can be used against you in a negligence or medical malpractice case in New York?

Learn whether there's any expectation of privacy when posting comments on Web 2.0 social networking sites. Find out what a clever defense attorney can do with contradictory information that you put online.

For more information about negligence cases, medical malpractice or negligence cases here in New York, go over to Gerry's informative website, or call Gerry personally to answer your legal questions at 516-487-8207. He welcomes your call.

The Law Office of Gerald M. Oginski, LLC
25 Great Neck Rd., Ste. 4
Great Neck, NY 11021
516-487-8207

SEO Tip # 9: Check your link popularity

heidisogn@comcast.net (Heidi Sogn) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:33:48 GMT

I know, I know, we all thought we outgrew the popularity contests in high school but those darn search engines are bringing us right back. To a search engine, it’s all about how popular you are and you can’t be popular amongst the dorks, you need to be popular with the cool people or it doesn’t really count. To determine if you’re cool, search engines look at how many sites are linking to yours and the quality of those sites – the more popular the sites that like you, the more popular you become by association. It’s a high school e-deja vue (only former high school nerds are now often the cool people so who's getting the last laugh now…)

How do we know how many people are linking to us?

There are several free tools out there that check link popularity. I have found that I get different answers depending on which tool I use so I use several and then determine the commonalities among them. You can do a search for “Link Popularity checker” and you’ll get a whole slew of them. My favorite is MarketLeap.com because you can also enter your competitor’s web sites to see where they stand. Plus you can plug in your industry to see a comparison of others in the legal industry.

The results are helpful because they will tell you how many linkbacks (people linking to you) that you have but it will also show who some of the big players and “900 lb Gorillas” are in the industry. Many of these “players” are directories and are sites you might want to target for linkbacks (such as Avvo and FindLaw). I say “might” because I recognize there are politics and money involved with some of these sites, and I’m not addressing that right now (maybe I’ll tackle it in a future post, would certainly welcome your comments), I’m speaking strictly from an SEO standpoint. From an SEO standpoint, these sites will help you. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re the Lindsay Lohan of the online legal marketing world.

Of course, you could always go outside the legal world to make yourself more popular. Look for blogs in your client’s industry and post comments on it with links back to your site. This will establish your expertise in the area and provide linkbacks to your site so it’s a two-fer.

Social networking sites such as LinkedIn offer another free opportunity to increase your popularity. I recommend everyone in your office get on LinkedIn, with linkbacks to your site, of course. That said, before unleashing everyone into the world of social networking, thought should go into some firm guidelines. But again, that’s fodder for another post.

So, go ahead and relive your high school years online (consider it a second chance if need be). Ignore what your mama said because it IS important to be popular and money CAN buy popularity. Ride the coattails of the “in” crowd, your SERP* will love you for it!

*Search engine results page

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