Last week, I had a conversation with my friend. It went like this:

 

Him: “Did you watch Glee last night?”

Me: “No, I didn’t get a chance. I had a ton of homework.”

Him: “Are you going to watch it today?”

Me: “Of course!”

Him: “Hulu?”

Me: “You guessed it!”

 

And that’s pretty much how every conversation goes about television shows between my friends and me. I used to watch television live, but I just don’t have time for it anymore. And with three younger sisters filling up the DVR with Hannah Montana, I have to move to something online. My conclusion: Hulu – a video streaming site featuring TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox, ABC, and a plethora of other television networks.

 

But it’s not just me. Last month, 24 million other people made that conclusion.

 

In the first year of Hulu’s existence, their content library has grown 333 percent, from 12,000 videos in March 2008 to 40,000 videos as of today. Today it includes over 7,100 hours of premium video. And as of March of this year, more than 3.9 million Hulu players have been embedded across more than 100,000 websites.

 

The numbers are through the roof. But how did Hulu become so increasingly popular in less than a year? Glancing through the user feedback posted on Hulu’s website, users enjoy the service for a number of reasons, namely (a) the service is legal, (b) the ads are short, (c) the shows are posted in high quality, (d) the interface is clean and simple, (e) and users are inviting their friends to check out the sites.

 

Imagine you’re reading your favorite blog, and you click an embedded video. But what you find is something more than that – an entire television show. The embedded video looks so professionally created, that you click through to Hulu, browse around, and find a treasury of videos that are just waiting to be watched. And what happens when 3.9 million Hulu players are embedded across thousands of blogs? The web traffic goes through the roof!

 

With all this in mind, Hulu certainly adds some flair to your website. In our cyber society, where stylistic websites tend to attract more web traffic than bland ones, the use of Hulu makes a statement. It says “My website isn’t like all those other ones. It’s chic and it has a personality.” And people from all over the world will understand what you mean when they click to view the HD video embedded in your website.

 

So if you’re looking for visitors who can appreciate your top-end website, then instead of embedding a Youtube video, try embedding a Hulu video and be amazed at the results.

How to Turn Your Website Viral

 

We’re in the eye of the flu season in southern California, and in some way or another everyone is feeling its effects. In fact, I nearly caught walking pneumonia. In these types of seasons, a virus spreads throughout an entire population in a small amount of time. Shaking a hand, touching door handles, being in radius of someone sneezing – nearly every action can transfer the virus. And before you know it, nearly everyone is sick.

 

Just like the flu can go viral, a website online can go viral. I’m not talking about a website becoming a malicious virus that’s out to damage other computers. On the contrary, I’m referring to websites like Youtube or Facebook, where traffic levels spike due to the increasing popularity of the site. A website that is said to have gone viral attracts hundreds and thousands of viewers in a small amount of time.

 

This can happen for a number of reasons. However, the biggest is viral videos.

 

Viral videos are a huge way to increase traffic and popularity of a site. Everyone has seen viral videos, whether you know it or not. The most popular was a rendition of O-ZONE’s Dragostea Din Tei called Numa Numa. Less than three months after the release of the video, it had been viewed more than two million times on the debut website alone. Commercials for brand-name products are a type of viral video. Viral videos, when used correctly, can have an enormous effect on the web traffic.

 

Other viral videos more company-based would be commercials played during the Super Bowl, and then watched over and over again on the internet after the game.

 

This is just one of thousands of examples of how companies have got themselves off the ground by using viral marketing. To do so yourself, simply come up with an idea that would catch the attention of your target audience. It could be as long as five minutes or as short as commercials aired on the television. Then, put your plan into action. Use services like Youtube or Viddler or Vimeo to host your videos, and wait as the traffic soars. Additionally, you could use Twitter or other modes of social media to get the word out about your new video. Then, just sit and watch it go viral. You might just surprise yourself.

 

So if you’re looking for hundreds of thousands of viewers, and ads just aren’t working out for you, try going viral with a viral video!

Some people use Twitter for their own personal use, to keep in touch with friends, to keep up on the news, or to promote their website or products. If you are a website owner, here are five ways that Twitter can be beneficial to your website:

1. Build a large group of followers – Whether you are selling a product, or offering services there are bound to be people who are interested in what you have to offer. Many people do a simple search for products they’re after, and if your tweets show up on the search results, then there’s a chance they’ll follow you. Send the link to all of your friends, and ask them to send it to theirs. Pretty soon, you’ll have attracted a large group of followers.

2. Direct traffic – Once you have all of these followers, you can begin to direct the traffic to your website. By tweeting with your website URL, there will inevitably be someone who will click on your link. Furthermore, if you ask your friends to re-tweet your website, the message will be spread all over Twitter and there’s no telling who much traffic you’ll receive.

3. Receive feedback – If you have a large group of followers, and want feedback on something then simply tweet a question. You’ll be amazed how many responses you get from your followers.

4. Sync your RSS feeds – With TwitterFeed, a tweet will be automatically published every time you blog. You can control what types of things are in the tweet, picking from the title, a description of the post, and a link to the post. Additionally, you can have a prefix or suffix, such as “New blog post:”

5. Update from virtually anywhere – With all of the third-party apps now available, you can update your Twitter account from virtually anywhere. You can set it up via text messaging, on your iPhone, Blackberry, email, or your computer.

Utilizing Twitter is not hard, and it’s a great way to begin promoting your website, products, or services.

Two of the most popular blogging platforms online are Blogger and WordPress.  With both platforms, users can sign up for a free blog and are given the additional option of purchasing a custom domain for their blog. There are many key differences between accounts at Blogger.com and WordPress.com, and your decision to use the former or the latter to host your blog is based solely upon what features you think a content management system should include.

Let’s begin with themes, because every blogger is obsessed with how their website looks. With Blogger, you are free to edit any of the themes, style sheets and colors, and you can also install a third party theme (a popular website that offers free downloadable Blogger themes is BlogSkins). There’s a catch, however, and that is that Blogger has a unique markup language, so in order to create your own theme, some learning is involved. WordPress seems to fall on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum, where there is no template editing available to users, and style sheet editing is available as a paid upgrade. Select WordPress themes allow you to upload a header image, and even then, many of the available WordPress themes are quite disappointing.

The next issue that arises is how images are stored and how much storage space you get. Unless you have an image heavy blog (like a photo blog or a showcase of your work), bloggers don’t tend to use that much image space. Blogger gives users 1GB of image storage and all images are uploaded to a Picasa Web Album gallery that is linked to your Google Account. WordPress on the other hand, gives users 3GBs (paid upgrades are available) of images, .ppt, .doc, and .pdf file storage and you can add an image gallery to any post. If you’re concerned about uploading other types of files on Blogger, you can always upload .ppt, .doc, and .pdf files to Google Docs.

Another thing that will tear bloggers’ opinions is the static page feature. WordPress has consistently allowed the publishing, editing, and deleting of static pages. Blogger, on the other hand, does not offer the same time of availability. At a first glance, the unavailability of this feature on Blogger seems a little disappointing, however, with some patience and time, static pages can be artificially created.

Those are the main ones, but of course, there are many more feature differences that I didn’t discuss.  Or of course you could always create your own from scratch like Corporate Search Optimization and NetScope did.

There is only so many things that one can do to promote their website, and while someone may think that they have done everything in their power possible, they’ve missed a big opportunity if they haven’t created a Facebook fan page for their website.

A couple of months ago I started a blog that would chronicle my experiences on the bus. I thought that it was an interesting idea for a blog and a lot of people would enjoy a bus rider’s perspective of public transportation. I bought a domain, created a theme, and went the whole nine yards. But then I realized that I had no readers. What was the point of putting the time and effort into a blog if there were no readers? And that’s when I created a Facebook Fan Page for this new blog of mine. It was a simple page that had some information about my new blog, a link to it, and some information about myself. I invited all of my friends to become fans of my new blog, and within a matter of days I had over a hundred fans, all of whom I assumed clicked through to my new website.

It was simple, and within five minutes I had hundreds of new potential readers. Even by the act of creating the fan page I got the word out there that there was this new website I thought that they might enjoy taking a look at.

Other than the general simplicity of Facebook fan pages, there are some other great features that Facebook has given its users. Dave Rigotti hits on the biggest of the features on Search Engine Journal. According to him, because these fan pages are public and do not require someone to log in to view them they only increase the SEO of a website. Fan page admins can send out updates to fans. This is extremely helpful if you’re trying to promote a particular product. Another feature is that Facebook fan pages can have new feeds. All you have to do is update it with a line of text, a picture, or a video and it will instantly appear on the home page of all of your fans.

In addition, Mashable talks about five elements of a successful Facebook fan page.

There are so many things that one can do to promote their website, but a large fan base can be found in creating a fan page and Facebook has so many advantages to helping webmasters do just that.

With the release of Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, many are clinging to old traditions and aren’t giving up their allegiance Google, but those who have decided to test the waters of this new search engine have found quite a jewel. In this post I’d like to reflect a bit upon some of the features of our new search engine, and the differences between Google and Bing.

One of the most obvious differences between the two competing search engines is the styling of the homepage. While google.com displays a simple logo, a search box, and a line of links at the top, bing.com displays an exceptionally pleasing travel-oriented photograph daily. Further, hovering over the photograph provides users with snippets about it. Today’s image is of the Louvre, and it says “The world is full of great art museums, but few are as well-known and admired as the Louvre.”

Bing provides ten times more information on its search results page than Google does. Type the name of a car into Bing and feast your eyes on all of its specs. Type a company name into Bing and get the customer service number, something that would require navigation to the company’s website when using Google. Move your cursor to the right of a search result and Bing will give you a summary of the page and you can determine whether or not to navigate to that page. Hover over a video result and the video will begin to play. You don’t have to go to Youtube or Hulu to watch videos anymore, and you don’t even have to press Play. Just hover. I could go on and on about the little things like these that make the Bing experience just that: an experience.

Whereas Google is fast and familiar, Bing is attractive. However, when it comes down to it, Bing is not as comprehensive in its search results as Google is, according to Citigroup who tested 200 of the most popular queries in both Bing and Google to see which search engine would produce the most relevance. However, what may be considered relevant by Citigroup’s standards may not be for the rest of society.

But why not let you try it for yourself?

The web is constantly changing, transforming to suit the needs of the current audience.  With more web developers mastering the art of SEO (search engine optimization), many of them wonder how social media plays a role in increasing traffic to their site.

It is important to have at least a basic understanding of how SEO functions in order to grasp social media’s role within it. Search engine optimization is achieved through relevance in keywords and concepts and authority through links on sites like Digg or Stumbleupon. Ian from Conversion Marketing makes a case that the singular thing that fuels both relevance and authority is social media. Having a presence in the social media arena provides keywords and concepts as well as links. He goes on to say that building up a social media campaign without the use of SEO is fruitless. “Social media and SEO,” says Ian, “are now inextricably linked. You couldn’t separate ‘em if you tried.”

Cameron Olthuis from Search Engine Land suggests that, since social media sites are ranked high in the eyes of search engines, a web developer will excel far more by ranking their website high within a social media site than on any particular search engine. To do this, he recommends uploading videos to Youtube, or creating a MySpace or Facebook profile.

There are a plethora of additional articles that one could peruse, but the general consensus is the same: social media and SEO cannot function in and of themselves unless they work hand-in-hand. They are complimentary, and when used together are powerful tools for increasing traffic to your website.

Additional reading:

- Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success
- You Can't Separate Social Media and SEO
- The Evolving State Of Social Media & SEO
- Social Media Friendly SEO
- Social Media Optimization: It's Like SEO, For Social Sites

Social Media utilization is as important to search engine marketing as peanut butter is to jelly.  The trick to making your company's social media strategy deliver solid analytics....Work with an agency that has recent wins for other clients in this space.  A sampling of social components that prove to be effective:

- Company blog.....updated often
- Commenting on blogs within your industry, get involved!
- Profiles on different vertical portals that are aligned with your industry
- photos of applicable testimonials and recent project wins
- Become the knowledge source for our business...give it a voice!  Use of podcast(s) are a nice complement
- Get conencted...Enter facebook (business-to-consumer) or LinkedIn (business-to-business)
- Dedicate tiem for your social media exploration...30 mintues a day...after you return from your daily workout at the gym.

Website Redesign - The Proper Migration Plan

Things To Remember:

Platform/URL Structure/Design

A new web site should have more pages than the previous.

Check rankings for all pages within the website

Design should allow for textual content for each page – use text based navigation (CSS) avoid using flash unless needed.

Plan out Search Engine Friendly URLs. Create a URL-friendly structure for spiders and human visitors.

Map out the Site Hierarchy carefully - how you serve up the site's content can have a dramatic effect on your search engine rankings. Determine if you should use a sub-domain vs. sub-folder strategy as you redesign your website. Avoid burying pages deep within your site;s content.

Content

Combine usability and SEO objectives

Develop a set of keywords to focus on. Incorporate keywords into pages with content.

Use real text on pages, avoid text in an image.

Aim for 400 words of content on the home page and 250 words on internal pages.

Prepare for Blended Search – make sure all video and images are well optimized prior to launching the new site.

Pre-launch Checklist: Make sure all pages from old website are matched with equivalent pages on new website

Inventory all current content and digital assets and create a matrix of old site to new site.

Evaluate existing content and try to include content that is currently ranking in the new content. Check for content that will be phased out. Loss of original content may cause existing rankings to drop.

Test the move process by moving the contents of one directory or subdomain first. Then use a 301 Redirect to permanently redirect those pages on the old site to the new site. This tells Google and other search engines that your site has permanently moved.

Set the TTL of the relevant DNS records to about 5-10 seconds a few days before the move. Then changes to your DNS records will propagate much faster. After the move, increase the TTL again. This will increase the load on your name server and possibly the latency of your site (because DNS lookups are slower).

The best way to keep the databases in sync when moving servers is to first import the current DB into the new host, and then set the scripts on the old host to use the new host as their database server. That way no matter which server people hit, they're always getting the same DB.

Check to see that the pages on the new site are appearing in Google's search results. When you're satisfied that the move is working correctly, you can move your entire site.

- Don't do a blanket redirect directing all traffic from the old site to the new home page. This will avoid 404 errors, but it's not a good user experience. It is ideal to do page-to-page redirect (where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site) this is more work, but gives the users a consistent and transparent experience.

- If there won't be a 1:1 match between pages on the old and new site, try to make sure that every page on the old site is at least redirected to a new page with similar content.

DO NOT LAUNCH the new web site until ALL old pages/URLs are redirected to the new URLs.

Watch out for capitalization issues. Some servers are case-sensitive while others are not. If this is the case with your switch, then you should run a site-wide link check after the switchover to be sure that all links are working.

Check both external and internal links to pages on the site.

- Contact the webmaster of each site that links to the old site and ask them to update the links to point to the renamed pages (i.e. http://www.site.com/oldsite.htm should redirect to http://www.site.com/newsite.aspx).

- Check for internal links within any old content, and update them to point to the renamed pages. Once your content is in place on your new server, use a link checker like Xenu to make sure you don't have broken legacy links on your site. This is especially important if your original content included absolute links (like www.example.com/cooking/recipes/chocolatecake.html) instead of relative links (like .../recipes/chocolatecake.html).

Create a Webmaster Tools account and verify ownership.

Create and submit a Sitemap listing all the URLs on the new site. This tells Google that the new content is now available on the new site and that they should crawl it.

Review crawl errors regularly

Make sure 301s from the old site are working properly, and that the new site isn't showing unwanted 404 errors.

Save a copy of the old web site

Make copy of the old on your hard drive. Call the original web something like - mysite-old. That way you'll always have a proper backup should you have to back out of the move. Use your "new" copy to make changes to script paths etc to suit the new service.

Keep the old site files accessible on the old server for a month after you have made the move to the new server. This will allow websites and search engines to update their caches. Also, check the server logs for spider activity to ensure that your most important search engine sources have found you.

It’s been a busy Friday in the search marketing community. I hope you find these great postings useful and maybe try some of it out on your websites.

One year after the redesign

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