Flash crawl-able by Google spiders

I have been emailed this article probably about 6 times in the past 2 days, so here it is: Google Now Crawling and Indexing Flash Content

Google is finally almost able to index text and links in Flash content. Long overdue, in my opinion. This is a great thing for online marketing, for sure.

The eCommerce In-Store Experience

I just stumbled upon this site that allows you to browse Amazon's inventory of books as if you were strolling through a brick-and-mortar book store. Check out the neat way e-commerce and the in-store experience combine at Zoomii.com.

Neat!

SEO for the 2008 Presidential Campaign?

A friend of mine posed a "what-if" conversational topic recently, about being tasked with optimizing the web site of a US presidential hopeful for the upcoming election. Though amusing to ponder how one might use SEO to crush or elevate such an important campaign on the web, it brought up a valid point - how ARE the presidential hopefuls doing with their online marketing, and more specifically, their natural search result rankings?

Here is a great article I came across, as I wondered just that: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whether-dnc-or-rnc-political-candidates-need-seo

Web Publishing Tutorials

Free web publishing resources from UT Austin: http://www.utexas.edu/learn/

My Online Marketing & SEO Resources

I exported all my SEO/ Online Marketing-related bookmarks from my laptop and published them online here:
http://zarasteadman.com/bookmarks.html

Check it out for a wealth of resources on content and technical SEO, viral marketing, online marketing, and other random things. I will be adding to this list in the future.

Social Media and Usability in Crises

I've always thought online media was fascinating to look at through the lens of anthropology, or the development of social communities. Obviously - the internet, at its very core, is nothing more than a communication tool used by people to express a message the most efficient way possible. Our need to communicate as human beings has manifested itself in this great new technology, that is now slowly breaking down every possible communication barrier.

Over the years we've seen it transform, building up as a robust channel for expressing thoughts and ideas through images, sound, words, video, and beyond. But what surprises me more than anything, is the way we seem to use it on instinct. The way that people, from professional internet developers to the barely computer-literate, approach using the internet in the same ways. I believe that usability works by figuring out the way that human beings want, or even expect, the internet to function.

OK, that was an absurdly long intro for the subject I actually want to mention. A friend of mine passed away last Saturday. This friend lived in another city in Texas, which means that I saw more of him on MySpace and Facebook than in person. So, when he died, the first thing I did, and what I believe many of his friends did, was turn to the internet. We went to his MySpace page and clicked through the photos. We read his last blog entry. We looked for comments from his friends and family. And then - we began to comment on his Facebook wall (a public bulletin board on a person's Facebook profile page).

Comment after comment began to appear on our friend's wall, as if everyone had the same idea of turning his online profile into a memorial. Into a place to informally eulogize him. It proved the fact that we all went to his Facebook profile to mourn him. It proved the fact that when we needed to express our sense of loss, we found an avenue to do that in the same exact way. And that way was by using an online application never meant or designed for this kind of thing, but that seemed to serve our purpose.

When I saw Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, speak at SXSWi I felt he was criticized for his claim that Facebook's goal was simply to provide the best method for communication. "If that's so," someone asked "then why isn't the Facebook messaging system robust enough?" "Why is there no search and sort function for old private messages?" and a laundry list of suggested improvements to the site's messaging system followed.

Today I realize that Facebook has succeeded in meeting its goal through usability. The application was designed for communication - not organization. It is there so that, in your moment of shock and grief, when you are purely working on instinct, you are able to click on a single blue button, and tell your friend that you miss him. And that you will remember him fondly.

Any takers?

I need someone to invent this for me: a search function for a server/ ftp client. I would love to "search for" and locate, say, all index.html files on a server.

Tracking Your Brand on Social Media Sites

Finally, a mainstream tracking system is being developed to enable alerts on mentions of a website or brand name across social networking sites including Flickr, Digg, Technorati - and all of those other brilliantly viral, but frustratingly untrackable breeding-houses of online word-of-mouth.

OK, that was a long sentence. I haven't thoroughly explored Yahoo! Pipes yet to be an expert on what it really is, besides what Yahoo says it is, which is a "free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor." ... But whatever it is, and however it works, it has allowed the invention of Kingsley Joseph's Social Media Firehose.

The Social Media Firehouse pipe allows you to receive alerts whenever your brand or site is mentioned on select social media sites. It is based on Joseph's Social Media Mention Engine pipe, which simply returns a list of mentions across specialized searches like Yahoo! Local, Google Base, and Flickr.

The following is an excerpt from Church of the Customer, and details how to actually USE the pipe. Enjoy.

'In the search field, fill out the terms you want to track. For example, Salesforce Ideas could use: "salesforce+ideas", ideaexchange, ideastorm, dellideastorm, mystarbucksidea. Usually the second field (URL fragment to ignore) should be .yourdomain.com . This is to prevent posts made in the your own blog/community from showing up. The dot before the domain is important.

The first time you run the search, Yahoo might return an empty list. To force it to go fetch feeds, click "More Options" and then click "Get as RSS". You can then hit back and re-run the pipe successfully.

Titles are de-duplicated and sorting is reverse chronological. Multiple search terms can be used and the matched term will be prefixed to the title of the post. This doesn't do mass media, because there are good tools for that (Google Alerts come to mind). Send any feature requests Kingley's way, but don't hold your breath. He's a busy guy : )'

As a side note, the reason I can copy and paste the above text is because CotC has a Creative Commons attribution. Very cool.

On passionate user experiences

Here's a cool link to a blog on Creating Passionate Users. The blogger, Kathy Sierra, presented a keynote lecture at this year's SXSWi that brought up a few surprising points about designing a satisfying user experience. A few things I remember off the top of my head include:

-Give your design elements natural physics. For example, that "bouncy ball bounce" you experience when using the scroll function on an iPhone creates a satisfying emotional response in a user. Using actual physics in your design is a good way to engage users.

-When designing a user experience, keep in mind the physical health of your user. That's right - if you allow your users to experience your brand through body and brain exercises, chances are your users will appreciate you more.

-This all has to do with a theory Kathy has about allowing your service or product to make the user feel like they "kick-ass." Confused? It's all in the blog.

Ringlight's New Blog

SO, Brandon Wiley set up a news blog on ringlight.us. I'm excited about it, so I thought maybe you would be too. I love having updates on the emergence of cool things!

SXSW Podcasts, Rich Media Optimization

One of the panels I missed at SXSWi, that I really wanted to attend was on the topic of optimizing rich media content - like Flash videos, podcasts, and the like. I searched through a list of podcasts from the conference, but did not find that one (though I haven't finished looking)... and here is the link to those podcasts if anyone's interested: SXSWi 2008 Podcasts

I suppose there are already a few ways I can think of that would help in the optimization process of rich media content, including submission to rich media search engines like hype machine, Google Video, and similar directories/ search sites. Of course tagging your content and adding a relevant description blurb in YouTube, and other video submission sites could also help associate that content with specifically targeted keywords.

I'm very interested in any other methods... so I'll probably write more about this after I've done some research.

Technology/ Web meetups and groups in Austin, Texas

Here's a list of technology/ web design/ development and related meetups and associations I found in Austin, Texas.

• Austin Designer Meetup (meetup.com)
• The Austin Web Design & Developer Meetup Group (meetup.com)
• The Austin Flash Meetup Group (meetup.com)
• Austin PHP Meetup (meetup.com)
• The Austin Internet Marketing Meetup - SEO/SEM/SMO/PPC (meetup.com)
• The Austin E-Business Brunch Meetup (meetup.com)
• Association for Women in Technology, Austin
• Association for Women in Communications, Austin
• Austin Technology Council
• Austin Free-Net
• Austin Community of the Society for Technical Communication
• Austin Java Users Group
• Austin Local Internet Society
• American Institute of Graphic Arts, Austin Chapter

Feel free to tack on any more links in the comments. Thanks!

Who doesn't love free lectures on new media?

I mentioned before that I attended a New Media Lecture Series hosted by the ACTLab of University of Texas. For anyone interested in learning about new media today, I'd recommend checking out the lectures online. For those who think they already know all about new media today, perhaps this will inspire you to put together your own series of lectures :)

Here is a link to the lectures online: New Media Series Lectures - University of Texas, April 2008

Who are the SEO experts?

I was recently asked what kind of certification I had in the field of SEO. This question piqued my curiosity into what kind of certification there could be for SEO... and a few minutes later I discovered a list of sites claiming to provide SEO certification.

But, to me, these sites just felt seedy and strange. I kept asking "who are these people?" wondering who had the authority to decide what were correct/ incorrect SEO strategies, and whether anyone cared about these certifications in the industry itself.

Then, I found this article on SEO Certification and it seemed to answer my question. Basically, I gleaned from the article that reliable SEO Certification is a myth - and that sites claiming to provide it have more chance of being a pyramid sales scheme than a genuine authority on SEO training.

How, then, can we prove we have SEO chops, if we in fact do? In the past I've always let search engine results pages speak for me... if a site you worked on is ranked in the top ten on SERPs - doesn't that prove your SEO expertise? Then again, I can see how maybe it wouldn't...

Only2Clicks Wins

OK, I love this site: http://www.only2clicks.com

It is my new home page. Why? Because, first, it allows you to create an Opera-like start page with clickable thumbnails to all your most frequently-visited websites. And secondly, it allows you to upload your own CSS skin. Which, as a web developer/designer... is way fab.

Another plus is the fact that you don't have to continually log in over and over again, which is the reason why I never found convenience in iGoogle or My Yahoo. Why have a customizable home page that you have to log in to see? Isn't the whole point of having a customized home page the convenience of not having to type? Or am I just lazy?

Green is the new Blackle

I've got sustainable living on the brain because tomorrow is Earth Day, and also because I spent part of my weekend helping my sister construct a crank-powered flashlight that can be charged by a child using a sit-and-spin for school. Nice. So, here's a hodge-podge list of all things green on the web right now. (See an earlier post for more enviro-friendly sites.)

• Yahoo! Green: Yahoo's information portal on all things relating to an environmentally-conscious lifestyle. Includes environmental news headlines, blogs, and online tools to calculate your carbon footprint and help you improve the environmental impact of your everyday life.


• Instructables: Instructables is an online forum for sharing unique, and oftentimes outlandish, DIY projects. Described as a "show-and-tell" of DIY projects, it allows people to view, learn how to build, and collaborate on their own and other people's mix-media projects. The reason I include this site on this green list, is because of the way it allows us to explore new uses for old materials - bringing recycling and re-use to a new level of imagination and interactivity.


• Lighter Footstep: This site is a web-based magazine showcasing articles and forums on sustainable living. Also check out ecoTumble, sister site to Living Footstep, that serves as an online "scrapbook" of links, trvia, and tidbits to do with living green.


• Energy Star: Energy Star is a government program sponsored by the US departments of Energy and Environmental Protection to add incentive for US consumers to buy energy-efficient products. Their home on the web is a wealth of information on energy efficiency ratings for consumer products, plans on how to build an energy-efficient home, and a list of rebates and incentives on environmentally-friendly consumer products that you can cash in on.

The Deal with Site Maps

For SEO and usability purposes, it is beneficial for your website to have two kinds of Site Maps. One site map is specifically for the benefit of users on your site, to help them navigate the different pages, and also to help organize and link all pages on your site together.

Ideally, this site map would be in HTML format, divided into sections, and provide clear links with descriptive text to each of the pages or sections of your site.

The second type of site map to upload to your site is specifically used by search engine spiders, to help locate and index the content of your site. This site map is in XML format, and is ideally uploaded to the highest directory possible on your site's server.

Google provides more information on site maps here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40318

In a previous post I mentioned a helpful XML site map generator online at XMLsitemaps.com, but I have found that this tool limits you to 500 pages if you don't want the paid upgrade. In search of a more useful site map generating tool, I discovered the Audit My PC Free Google Sitemap Generator.

For free, this tool will thoroughly analyze the pages of your site and generate a comprehensive site map following rules you set up if you so choose (rules including "ignore images," "respect no-follow links," "respect links disallowed in robots.txt," etc.), and will allow you to export both the site map XML file itself, as well as a report on all site links. This will allow you to identify broken links and URLs on your site, as well as pages that time-out when loading. I highly recommend this tool for generating and analyzing your own sitemap.xml.

By the way, once you've created and uploaded your XML sitemap file, don't forget to make full use of it by uploading it to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer. ;)

Pirate Blog

Swedish law and Web 2.0. What do the two have to do with each other? Meet The Pirate Bay - everything you ever wanted in and feared about online peer to peer services. I was introduced to this Sweden-based "torrent-tracker" by my friend and blogger Brandon Wiley during a ACTLab New Media Talk Series as the ultimate online piracy paradise.

According to Wired magazine, a Pirate Bay operator stated "All of us who run the TPB are against the copyright laws and want them to change."

Backed by lax Swedish copyright laws, The Pirate Bay utilizes peer to peer technology to provide a searchable directory of downloadable music, movies, games and software via torrents. Today's Top 100 torrents on The Pirate Bay include episodes from South Park and Battlestar Galactica, the movies No Country For Old Men and Cloverfield, and the game Assassin's Creed.

But The Pirate Bay's philosophies on the freedom of information exchange are not limited to peer to peer file sharing. This month TPB unveiled it's own uncensored blogging service, Baywords.

According to the site itself, TPB will defend any blog posts a user decides to make, even using content usually barred from US-based blog services... "As long as you don’t break any Swedish laws in your blog."

OK, I'm not sure how awesome that actually is. I guess it would depend on what Sweden’s “hate speech” legislation bars...

Keyword Research for SEO/ SEM

Here are some nifty tools for keyword and competitor research for Search Engine Optimization/ Marketing:

• WordTracker: Find related keywords, synonyms, or specific keyword phrases in a database containing all searched-for terms for the past 100 days. This tool also allows you to compare KEI scores, to find keywords with a good ratio of number of searches for that keyword made, vs. the number of competitive sites returned for that search query.



• AdGooroo: Compare your PPC campaigns with your competitors'.



• KeywordSpy: Find what paid, organic, and affiliate keywords are being used by any URL on the web. You can also learn what position they are ranked for each keyword, as well as the amount of competition for that KW.



• SpyFu: Get the scoop on your competitor's PPC ad budget, clicks per day, cpc, organic and paid keywords targeted, and top competitors. You can also drill down to get more info on how much they are spending on each keyword, what they rank for that keyword on SERPs, the text in the title and body for those pages, and more.

Social Bookmarking: Saving Sites of Interest

You've seen this button on mine, and other blogs or websites:

But what the heck does it mean? If you click it, you'll be asked to select a social bookmarking service with which to save, or bookmark, the website you are currently visiting. The concept of website bookmarking (also called "favorites" on some browsers) has been around for a long time, but social bookmarking is a whole new spin on storing and sharing your favorite web destinations.

Social bookmarking is a way of saving interesting online articles, videos, and other web pages in a personal account online. This means that you can access them from any computer connected to the internet at any time. On top of that, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Bookmarks, and Technorati allow you to register a personal or shared account, save bookmarks, organize and tag them however you want, and share them with others on the web.

Here are some other cool things you can do with social bookmarking:

• Find and rate new online favorites by visiting sites that other people have bookmarked.


• Suggest sites to your friends by tagging a link with your friend's username.


• Doing a research paper or group project on monkeys? Bookmark resources online and tag them with "monkeys" or "research" and share the links with your whole team.


• If you are particularly interested in a certain subject, there are social bookmarking sites geared around specific topics of interest too! For example, if you're a tech junkie, you can get your fix of popular technology articles, blogs, and sites on Technorati.


• For most social bookmarking services, you can download a bookmarking button for your web browser, allowing you to bookmark sites with just one click.

Corporations on Wikipedia

I was recently asked for advice for a company wanting to know if they should start a corporate Wikipedia profile and how that can be done. Here is my reply, I hope it's helpful to others as well:

I’d have to do more research to confirm this, but to my knowledge Wikipedia discourages corporations and individuals from creating their own Wikipedia pages unless they are “noteworthy” (i.e. worth talking about in an encyclopedia). You also have to be careful if you are going to edit any information on Wikipedia while on a corporation’s network because Wikipedia can track this and your corporation can get a bad reputation from it. (You can track changes made on Wikipedia by corporations here: http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/)

To discourage link-building using Wikipedia, the site recently made all links on the site no-follow links, so they actually no longer contribute to Page Rank . That being said, you might still get a lot of traffic from a link on Wikipedia if you manage to get a link up there. A good way to try and do this is if you have educational information on your site somewhere that you can link to as a reference. For example, an air-filter site that has a lot of information on allergies might put a link to reference the info on their site at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry about allergies.

I would say, go ahead and try to create a Wikipedia page, because there’s no harm in trying – and if it gets left there, then it could drive traffic to your site. But chances are, Wikipedia is going to take the page down quickly and it will be difficult to keep your links up there.

I would try creating a corporate profile on places that would allow it, without the “no-follow” problem – like Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, etc. and linking to the site in directories with high Page Rank, like Yahoo! Submit Basic.

Twitter Account for Sale on eBay

As a member of the "web industry" it's hard not to feel immense pressure to own a Twitter account. Why - is not certain. In fact, I wade through hundreds of articles pondering the point of Twitter a day. And yet, I own one. I have yet to determine the value of Twitter, though I find that I appreciate it most when I want to update the world on a social event in which I am taking part.

For example, I used Twitter the most I ever have at SXSW Interactive - where I could follow and tweet updates on events hundreds of like-minded individuals were attending, including the Zuckerberg fiasco. I must admit, too, that my fingers were itching for a keyboard or cell phone when I stage managed the 2008 Austin Poetry Slam Finals - eager to be the first one to announce the Finals Team members' names for Nationals.

But can Twitter aid in online marketing initiatives?And does its use have monetary value? Andrew Baron thinks so, and has put his Twitter account with 1,400 followers up for sale on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160229562828

The verdict? Well, so far it's worth US $1,550.00 to someone.

Del.icio.us Tools Galore

Here's a whole long list of tools you can use with, on, and around everyone's favorite social bookmarking site del.icio.us.

Using Google's Webmaster Tools

Google offers free webmaster tools to help you check for technical issues that may be barring your website from high natural rankings. Here's the skinny on what's available in Google's Webmaster Tools, and what you can do with them.

Note: To use all the webmaster tools available, you must have FTP/back-end access to your website. This is so you can verify your site on Google and utilize automatic diagnostic features that help you improve the indexing of your site by search robots.

1. Log into Google's Webmaster Tools with your Google Account info.

2. Type in the URL of the site you want to optimize in the Dashboard.

3. You will now see an Overview page, where you can follow instructions to verify your site by uploading a file to your server via FTP, or adding a meta-tag to the site's HTML. Verification will unlock diagnostics tools, statistics on your site, link information, and various other tools.

4. Now it's time to upload a sitemap in xml format to Google. It's easy to create your own site map online, or learn how to make one yourself using Sitemap Protocol. Once your sitemap.xml file has been created, upload it via FTP to the highest directory on your site's server. Now go to the Sitemaps section of WM Tools and click on the link to "Add a Sitemap."

5. After submitting your sitemap, go to Diagnostics > Web Crawl. This is where information is listed about errors or issues impeding Google's searchbot from crawling any page on your site. This includes any broken links, pages that time out before loading, and any restricted URLs. Using this tool to identify erroneous pages on your site will allow to pinpoint the problem to go in and repair site content.

6. I will skip Mobile Crawl as that is for websites designed for mobile devices - and since this is a fairly new invention, I'm sure this is not applicable to most of you.

7. Now go to Diagnostics > Content Analysis. This page deals with issues to do with the actual content on your site, including meta-tags and title tags. You can drill down and identify pages on your site with duplicate, long, or short meta-descriptions, or missing title tags, and any non-indexable content.

8. I'm honestly not so convinced of the value offered by the Webmaster Tools' "Statistics" section, but go ahead and poke around if you are interested in general Page Ranking on your site, what search queries are leading to your site on Google, and general info about subscribers (if you have any - though I would recommend FeedBurner for gathering those stats if you're serious about subscribers), or a list of indexed pages.

9. Ever wonder what pages on your site are being linked to externally? Check out the Links section of Webmaster Tools. You can also find out what Sitelinks appear for your site on Google's search results pages. For more information on how to get sitelinks up for your site, or what the heck sitelinks are, you can read some theories on how to get sitelinks to appear.

10. Upload a robots.txt file to your site's server if you want to prohibit Googlebots from crawling specific pages of your site. For example, block the bots from certain secure pages. Don't know what a robots.txt file is? Learn more about them here. Remember also to include a reference to the location of your sitemap in the robots.txt file.

11. You can generate and analyze your robots.txt file in the WM Tools "Tools" section.

And that about wraps up Webmaster Tools.

Tech Blog Buffet!

I just added a new link to my personal "useful links" list: Step Three Profit, a blog kept by my good friend and inspirational developer dude Brandon Wiley.

If anyone wants to recommend any more cool tech blogs, let me know. Here are some others I have been reading recently:

• Steven Hazel's Hackerdashery
• Horse.Pig.Cow
• Web Strategist
• Marketing Pilgrim

Portfolio Site

I've just started work on an updated portfolio site at ZaraSteadman.com.

It's been awhile since I sat down and coded a site from start to finish like the old days, so it's taking a while to get cross-browser fluency. Any feedback is appreciated!

New Discoveries

Here are some pretty cool sites I learned about this weekend at SXSW Interactive and thought I might share:

http://www.socialthing.com - Aggregate your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other social networking accounts into one... social... thing! It let's you keep up on what's going on with your friends in all creative spaces on the web at once. Currently in beta.

http://www.pmog.com - A game you can play, just by surfing the web in your FF browser. just install, register, and you're playing. Users set mines, leave gifts, messages, and more on pages across the web, which you (as a player) run into while randomly browsing. In retaliation or reciprocation you can set up your own surprises for other players. You gain "data points" for the length of time you spend on the web, and can even choose to play certain missions you run into and earn "badges". For example, to earn the "Indie badge," you must REFRAIN FROM USING Google FOR 24 HOURS while surfing on the web. Can you do it? In beta.

http://www.ihasahotdog.com/ - Just as charming and addictive as Icanhascheezburger.com. I think you can guess what this is about.

http://safaribooks.com/ - A great resource for tech-heads and web creatives. This is a growing modern archive of tech and development related books published by O'Reilly press that you can access from your computer, online. Check out 10 books at a time for $23 a month, or have your pick from 1000s of titles at any time for $43/month (cheaper than the YMCA!). This site has apparently been around a while.

http://www.Utterz.com - I think the concept is the same as SocialThing but from your cell phone, for people who prefer to text their updates. Or something.

http://www.bitstrips.com - Make a comic! It's fun! It's in beta though so it's kinda buggy. look: