On October 21st at 3pm Pacific time Google rolled out a major update to their search index. The combined effect of Google Instant and this substantial index update is being felt around the web.
Alexa, the guys who track traffic for the top 100,000 sites on the web, have a blog entry showing a few of the winners and losers in this post-google-instant world we now live in. Oddly enough a few of the biggest winners are file sharing sites. My guess is that they’re seeing more traffic because you have to actually go to a file sharing site to see if they have the file you want for download – rather than being able to see if they have what you’re after from the snippet (the preview text under the page title in the search results).
ProBlogger has a few thoughts on affiliate marketing today and how to bring together reader intent, a great product and your messaging.
BlogHerald has a post this week on how to use images to grab a user’s attention and increase retention for your blog. They include a few ideas for image types.
Firefox version 4 is on it’s way and the Beta is looking surprisingly similar to Chrome. I’m glad to hear the javascript engine is getting a much needed speed increase.
And finally: If you enjoy life hacks, check out this blog entry about the 30/30 work cycle. Quote: “I sit at my desk and work for 30 minutes without distraction, completely absorbed in my work. Then, after the 30 minutes are up, I drop whatever I’m doing and go do something fun for 30 minutes. During this relaxation time, I don’t think about work at all – I play games, write, whatever, but no work. After 30 minutes, I go back to my desk, rinse and repeat.”
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO.
Friends of ours launched a great service today called Highlighter.com. It’s a wordpress plugin that lets you visitors comment on text in your blog entries. It also lets your visitors share your content via Facebook and Twitter, driving more traffic to your site. You’re hearing about Highlighter a full week before the press launch, so if you’re an early adopter, be sure to give it a try. [Disclosure: Neither I nor Feedjit have received any compensation for mentioning highlighter. They are good friends and part of the Techstars program where I am a mentor.]
AdAge is reporting that Twitter today started injecting paid ads into tweet streams. Initially you’ll only see the ads if you use HootSuite. Twitter have a revenue sharing deal with HootSuite where Twitter sells the ads and they split the revenue with HootSuite. I’m sure this will quickly expand to every Twitter client including Twitter.com. My guess is that this will be their business model going forward.
If you ever thought small changes to your web form didn’t yield results, read this article about how Expedia earned $12 Million more per year by removing a single text field. Their “Company” field in the checkout form was confusing customers, so they removed it and saw a huge increase in the number of completed transactions and revenue.
And finally: From the luckiest-girl-alive department, the BBC is reporting today that an 18 month toddler fell from a 6 story building, bounced off an awning and was caught… wait for it… by a doctor. She was completely unharmed, shed a little tear and then quickly calmed down.
Have a spectacular Wednesday!
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO.
I hope you’ve had a happy Halloween and welcome back after a brief hiatus to the Daily Feed. Lets dive right in:
There’s a great question, which is really an observation on webmasters.stackexchange.com that points out that sitemaps for your blog or website are probably unnecessary. The argument is that sitemaps are supposed to help web crawlers like Googlebot find pages that aren’t linked to on your site. But if pages aren’t linked to by anyone, they won’t have anypagerank and won’t appear in the search results anyway. So the proper way to ensure Google indexes all pages on your site is to ensure you have a healthy link structure and that all pages have another page on your site linking to them.
InformationIsBeautiful.net has a fun diagram showing who is suing who in the telecoms industry. Be thankful you’re not part of that dogfight.
If your data is living in the cloud, Amazon have reduced their prices for data storage on S3. At Feedjit, we buy our servers and amortize them over 3 years because it’s more cost effective that way. If you’re looking for cheap hosting, check out Linode.com (my personal favorite) or Slicehost.com for an entry level Linux server.
Finally, today’s award for toughest bloke ever goes to this chap who saved a woman from a great white shark in Australia by grabbing the shark by the tail – and then refused to speak to the press about it.
I’ll be publishing the Daily Feed on a daily schedule once again for the rest of this week. Have a spectacular week!
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO
Welcome to Issue #47 of The Daily Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. The Daily Feed is published several times a week when we have news, information and helpful tips to share. Unsubscribe instructions are at the end of this message.
At Feedjit we’re considering getting rid of our Facebook integration via Facebook Connect. We’ve always allowed our users to control what data we store and were the first analytics company to allow website visitors to remove data we logged for their IP address. Privacy is a big concern for us and we would rather err on the side of removing features to give you more control over your data. As a website owner I’ve also found their servers to be a lot slower than our own and during peak load times (8am Pacific time) the FB Connect API slows our site down. Email me if you have an opinion about this issue.
The latest trend in online advertising is In-image ads. NPR is running a story on ad companies that will put ads on your site that sell fashion items that are being worn by the people in the photos on your site. For example on the celebrity gossip site, JustJared, you can click on the “Get the Look” tab beneath a photo in a story about pop star Rihanna filming a corn chip commercial and buy a cardigan sweater like hers for $195 from Piperlime.
Ever heard of hotlink protection? If you have a site with a lot of photos, you’ve probably been hotlinked without even knowing it. Hotlinking is when a website embeds an image tag in their HTML that loads an image from a second site rather than storing the image on their own servers and loading it from there. If a site hotlinks it doesn’t have to pay for the disk used to store that image and the bandwidth that is consumed when web browsers load the image. If you have a very popular web page and you hotlink images from someone else’s server you can cost them a lot of money.
Many sites use a technique called hotlink protection to prevent other websites from hotlinking their images. Hotlink protection detects if another website is loading an image you host and prevents the image from loading. There are reports that if you use hotlink protection, Google may remove you from their image search results. The reports are spotty and some webmasters who have protection in place are not reporting a problem yet, so keep an eye on this issue if it applies to you.
That’s it for today’s edition. You’ll notice that the frequency of the Daily Feed is changing to slightly less than daily. We’re focusing on delivering quality issues rather than quantity. As Plato once said: “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”. So you may find that I miss a day here and there, but hopefully you’ll notice an increase in quality.
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO
Welcome to Issue #46 of The Daily Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. You can read previous editions of The Daily Feed on our blog but note that posts to our blog are delayed 24 hours or more.
I’m back from a 1 week break and The Daily Feed will no resume it’s regularly scheduled programming. My apologies for the brief interruption.
This weekend the Blog World Expo was held in the Mandalay Bay convention center in Vegas. I didn’t go. I did consider going but I had a few objections.
The price was almost $1200 to attend and and wandering among expo booths gathering data I can get online and seeing panel bloggers repeat in person what they’ve already written just doesn’t give me a return on that investment. If these photos are anything to go by, attendance was sparse and the atmosphere wasn’t a rock concert. Here are a
couple more blog entries covering the conference.
Now that blogging is main-stream I expect to see more vertical conferences that bring together writers that cover the similar subjects, target similar audiences or have similar writing styles. I also expect to see less differentiation between journalists and bloggers. Being a “blogger” really means being a writer because every writer worth their salt blogs.
Speaking of rants, there’s a thread on Webmasterworld today discussing how links have become currency to most bloggers and webmasters which makes it very hard to get a few quality links to your site, even when you have a really great site or product. I’m not sure I completely agree with the author’s complaint – we regularly link to quality websites or products and I encourage you to do the same.
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO
Welcome to Issue #45 of The Daily Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. You can read previous editions of The Daily Feed on our blog but note that posts to our blog are delayed 24 hours or more.
The titles of your pages on your blog or website are the most important component when it comes to click-through-rate from search results and they are the second most important with regard to keyword ranking [explanation below].
Here is a quick list of page components and sources that Google and other search engines consider for keyword ranking of your site in descending order of importance:
- Keywords in links that point to your page. [You often have no control of these]
- Your page title
- Keywords separated by dashes in your URL
- The page heading at the top of your page in <H1> tags.
- Text close to the top of the page
- Text in other headings and bold sections on your site
- All other text including text in image ALT and TITLE attributes on your page.
- Google may also consider all other text on pages that link to yours in the order of this list. [If you're a programmer, you'll notice the last statement is recursive]
Remember that this list ignores pagerank, or how many inbound links you have and what the quality of those links are. If your site were ranked purely on keywords, this is how it would be done. Notice my omission of meta keywords or meta description. Most current data shows that those tags are completely ignored. I’d like to hear your opinions of the accuracy of my list above and about your own recent experiences with SEO. Drop me a mail at mark@feedjit.com and I’ll include your comments in tomorrows Daily Feed.
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO.
Welcome to Issue #44 of The Daily Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. You can read previous editions of The Daily Feed on our blog but note that posts to our blog are delayed 24 hours or more.
Today I’m going to share a few of my favorite blog entries on writing great blog posts.
- Make your opinion known
- Link like crazy
- Write less
- 250 Words is enough
- Make Headlines snappy
- Write with passion
- Include Bullet point lists
- Edit your post
- Make your posts easy to scan
- Be consistent with your style
- Litter the post with keywords
And finally, Lifehackery.com with 11 ways to write better blog entries. In summary:
- Writing is a habit, not an obligation
- Read Read Read!
- Avoid cliches.
- Start and end with a Bang!
- Get feedback on your writing – and listen to it
- The more conversational the better
- First be consistent, then add variety
- Correctly use conjunctions
- Comment on your own posts
- Write somewhere quiet where you won’t be distracted
- Create an outline for your blog entry using keywords and key ideas in notepad or wordpad before you start writing
Have a great weekend and don’t forget to write at least one blog entry before Monday.
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO
Welcome to Issue #43 of The Daily Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. You can read previous editions of The Daily Feed on our blog but note that posts to our blog are delayed 24 hours or more.
The kind of advice I love is advice that’s actionable and that will give me immediate results. Today I want you to do something very specific that will give you a boost in traffic. It’s going to take about 30 minutes of your time. Here goes…
I want you to write a blog entry. The title should start with the text “The Top X…” and I want you to replace X with a number. It could be 5 or 10 but no more than 12.
Here are a few example titles:
- The Top 5 things you should know before buying a home [You can replace "home" with "car", "boat", "cellphone", etc]
- The Top 10 Funniest videos on YouTube
- The Top 7 Online Scams
- The Top 5 most Beautiful People of all Time
Once you’ve come up with a great title, write the blog entry and include a well researched list of items. Embed photos or videos if that is the list you’re making. Include links to sources if you can. Make it a list that’s worth looking at.
Once you’ve done that I want you to visit your favorite online discussion forums and post your blog entry there.
Then I want you to tweet it and post it to Facebook.
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO.
Welcome to Issue #41 of The Daily Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. You can read previous editions of The Daily Feed on our blog but note that posts to our blog are delayed 24 hours or more.
I’m going to give you a simple tip today that has worked for me and will help you sell more on your blog or website. Here’s a rule of thumb: Long copy sells better than short copy. In other words a page of 600 words talking about your product will sell better than a paragraph of text. This rule applies to low and high cost items, but the effect is stronger for higher cost items. That is why when you respond to a late night infomercial enquiring about the Sleep Number bed they send you a big info packet with about 20 pages of information that includes a DVD. It’s a long copy sales pitch.
There’s an assumption on the Web that you have exactly 2 seconds to sell someone before they click through to the next website. People who only have 2 seconds to spend on your site aren’t going to buy anyway, so forget about them and focus on visitors who do have time.
I’m going to give you a real-world example that caused me to buy something today. Go and take a look at the following website. I don’t have a relationship with this company and I don’t get anything from you visiting them – it’s just a great example of long copy direct marketing.
The entire website is selling a single product. The reason I fell for this sales pitch today is because it has a ton of text. If you click through the tabs at the top you’ll see:
- A home page with about 300 words of intro
- How it works with around 1000 words of copy, a video and lots of photos
- A ton of reviews. This is an important component called Social Proof.
- The Buy Now page has yet more copy with more reviews and photos.
- And there is of course the accessories and support page.
All of this for a single product. There’s a reason this site reminds you of a 30 minute infomercial: Because this format works and has worked for over 50 years. The medium may be changing to the Web and the graphics and art may be updated, but the strategy is the same.
You’ve probably run across those sites on CNN selling a diet formula, weight loss trick or exercise system. When you click the ad you land on a site that looks like a news site or blog entry. What you’re really doing is reading a long copy direct marketing pitch. I can’t stand those sites either, but take the time to click a few of the ads and examine what the pitch looks like and how it guides you into making a buying decision. You’ll learn a lot.
As I said yesterday, when you’re selling on the web you need to do everything a real-world sales person would do in a real-world sales pitch. That is why longer copy sells more if you’re marketing without physically being there.
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO
Welcome to Issue #40 of The Daily Feed. If this email was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe on this page. You can read previous editions of The Daily Feed on our blog but note that posts to our blog are delayed 24 hours or more.
Last week we chatted about Direct Marketing. On Friday I gave you a history lesson courtesy of legends like Ogilvy and Ben Franklin. Today I’m going to focus on one aspect of Direct Marketing: Selling using Copy.
If you are selling something on a web site, no matter what you’re selling and no matter whether the site has a blog format or a catalog format, you are engaged in Direct Marketing (DM). To be even more specific, you are engaging in either one step or two step direct marketing.
One step DM is used primarily for products with a low to moderate cost. A visitor arrives at your website, you show them your sales pitch and try to get them to buy then and there.
Two step DM is also called Lead Generation. A visitor to your site reads an interesting article or sales pitch and fills in a form to request more info. At that point a sales person may call them or you may start the sales process via email. Higher value items are usually sold this way.
In both styles of DM you are selling someone without being there. This is a very important point. Usually when you buy a car, house, even a magazine subscription a sales person is present. They’ll shake your hand, you’ll see they dress well and have a polished manner about them. You decide you enjoy their company and will give them some of your time. You’ll laugh about the fact that you met your wives in the same city, and so on.
When you’re selling online you can’t be there in person. You have to do everything a sales person would normally do when they’re selling someone in person. The best online direct marketing companies know this and make sure that their website does an excellent job of filling in for a real-world sales person.
It constantly amazes me how few people know this basic principle. The web is filled with sites that show a product, a brief description and a price and expect customers to click the “Buy” button in droves. You need to SELL them.
I’ve said this before and I’ll remind you now: All money is made by someone selling something to someone else. Remember that and realize that your website needs to be the sales guy and you will do well.
Tomorrow I’m going to give you a few ideas on how your website can be a great substitute for a real-world sales team.
Regards,
Mark Maunder
Feedjit Founder & CEO.
