By Jill Whalen

When you review the keywords from which people clicked to your site, are they only peripherally related to what you provide? If so, your website is likely suffering from BlindWebsititis!

What Is BlindWebsititis?

BlindWebsititis is what happens to websites when those in charge of their content don’t come right out and say exactly what every page is all about. Instead, they use only corporate jargon, non-descriptive copy, or – in acute cases – no copy at all. It’s a horrible condition that affects hundreds of thousands of websites every year. Sadly, the pain of BlindWebsititis goes well beyond the hurt to the website itself; it often spreads to site visitors who have to try to guess what the company offers.

Even search engines aren’t spared from BlindWebsititis. Their symptoms include the miscategorization of the afflicted websites because there’s no way for them to assign relevant keywords.

Rather than dealing with the pain of BlindWebsititis, many users move away from infected sites as quickly as possible, in search of healthier ones that clearly say what they’re offering.

Causes of BlindWebsititis

This condition is so widespread that intensive research has gone into determining the possible causes. One major cause is the proprietary prose that companies use internally to discuss their offerings. While using company jargon within the walls of a business is not unhealthy in and of itself, when it makes its way to the website, it often turns into BlindWebsititis. Companies tend to forget that for every person who knows exactly what they do, there may be 20 others who don’t.

BlindWebsititis Immunity

While BlindWebsititis has been spreading like the flu, research finds that some websites are immune. What gives them this immunity? These companies are interested only in visitors who seek them out by brand name. It turns out that search engines use a special “immunized algorithm” that protects branded searches from coming down with the condition.

The Worst Cases

Sadly, companies who seek to gain new customers from the search engines – that is, people looking for their type of product or service who don’t already know that the company exists – are hurt the most by BlindWebsititis. These companies often stop growing, and in many cases premature death is inevitable.

The Cure

For critical cases of BlindWebsititis, companies must immediately take action! The first step is to let people who haven’t heard of them know that they’re in the right place. Because it’s widely accepted that people using search engines are generally searching for stuff, they are typically pleased when they find their information quickly and easily. The cure with the fewest number of side effects is to display this information as clearly and succinctly as possible.

The Recovery

Research into BlindWebsititis has shown that clarity on every page results in the best recovery rate because there is no beginning, middle, or end to any website. Because each page is a gateway to the rest of the site, when one page is afflicted, the rest are too. Adding clear content to all pages tells users that they’ve found what they’re looking for, which leaves BlindWebsititis with no further mode of attack. In fact, it’s been found that just adding a short, descriptive summary to the top of every page can cure BlindWebsititis immediately. (However, the cure has a longer recovery period for search engines if they have to re-index the previously afflicted pages.)

The Active Ingredients

Best results have been noted when the site creator uses keyword phrases in the most natural manner possible. This means users don’t have to think too hard, which boosts their own immune response to the affliction. Descriptive web writing provides complete information to search engine visitors who don’t know anything about the company or its products and services.

Beware of a Relapse!

While BlindWebsititis may seem to be cured on websites when a paragraph of text is added below the fold (rather than at the top), the affliction still exists, albeit in a dormant state. It may not affect search engines in this form, but because users often don’t look below the fold, they continue to feel the pain. Their suffering often takes the form of scratching their heads in wonderment. The resulting itchiness can become acute if the copy at the bottom of the page is keyword stuffed or slightly hidden with gray text and is suddenly noticed by the user.

Is Your Website Afflicted?

To see if your website has BlindWebsititis, take a look at it with fresh eyes. Perform usability tests with people who are not already familiar with your company and see if they can tell what you provide within a short amount of time. If they are confused or have to clíck around to your About Us page, then you have some work to do. Luckily, you’ll see great benefits when you completely cure BlindWebsititis by clearly describing your products and services. Benefits include increased search engine rankings, more targeted visitors, a decreased bounce rate, and higher conversions and sales.

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Chris Crum | Staff Writer

Says Only 1% of Sites Unhackable

Security company Panda Labs has discovered an online service that promises to hack into Facebook accounts for $100. They claim they will provide “clients” with login and password information to access any account on the social network.

“The service’s real purpose may be hacking Facebook accounts as they say, or profiting from those that want to try the service,” says PandaLabs Technical Director Luis Corrons. “In any case, the Web page is very well designed. It is easy to contract the service and become either the victim of an online fraud, or a cyber-criminal and accomplice in identity theft. Once an intruder hacks into a Facebook account, all personal data published on the site can be stolen.”

“Similarly, those accounts can also be used to send malware, spam or other threats to the victim’s contacts,” adds Corrons. “In the case of celebrities or other well-known entities, they can be used to defame the account holder, spread information in their name, etc. In any event, this is criminal activity.”

 Panda Labs says that in addition to extorting money and obtaining access to clients’ bank account information, the service also has characteristics in line with hacker affiliate programs. Essentially, these offer money to other cyber criminals for spreading malware. This particular site offers extra dollar-credits to spend on the service when users hack more accounts. Users are told they can get 20% of what they sell in credits for hacking more accounts.

The domain that hosts the site is registered in Moscow. Panda Labs speculates that the cybercriminals behind the site are members of an Eastern European Internet Mafia. Payments are conducted through Western Union to the Ukraine. The site claims to have been around for four years, with only one percent of Facebook accounts deemed “hack-proof.”

Facebook recently announced some big milestones. They have almost as many users as there are residents in the United States, and the company is now making money. It’s unfortunate that security issues continue to plague the site (and social media in general), and impede its true potential. It’s still easy to find people that are not using Facebook, and simply don’t want to because they don’t like having their information out there for people to see. Things like this aren’t going to do anything to change their minds.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is one of the many ways you can promote your website. It allows you to get your content out there for users who might be interested in your industry, services or products. Even though the implementation and use of RSS feeds might look complicated and hard to many people, it actually is a very easy and straight forward approach to syndicating content.

There are a few but very important elements in using and benefiting from RSS feeds. We have tried to make it as easy-to-understand as possible here:

1- Create an RSS Feed

Before you can begin the syndication process, you will need an RSS feed. There are many ways to do this. If you type, “Create an RSS Feed” on Google, you will get many results. However, we have come to the conclusion that this does not address ordinary people who might not be familiar with RSS or XML. We have 3 recommendations;

• Easy: This is the easiest way to do this for someone who might be a beginner. Simply, go here and create an account. It has a free trial for 3 weeks and then if you’d like to continue using it, it’s a low yearly fee. You just type your address in this web-based solution, and after a couple of options, it provides the feed for you. The only negative here is that you cannot edit the RSS feed created. However, it’s a good start.

• Moderate: Use one of the PC or Mac-based software to create the RSS feed manually. You can try many shareware and freeware software at download.com. This will enable you to make edits and perfect your RSS feed. The more you get into it, the more you will understand.

• Hard: You can use a web-based php application, which can easily be installed on your server or through your hosting server. The php application would crawl your site and create the RSS feed for you. The best part about this is that you do not have to manually create the feed; it will be automatically created by the script. Also, keep in mind that many content management systems such as WordPress and Joomla already have this functionality.

2- Submit Your RSS Feed
The next step would be to submit your RSS Feed to content and RSS sites so they can grab your content and display them on their servers. This will enable you to;

1. Get backlinks from these sites which are very important for organic search results
2. Get traffic from these sites
3. Increase your visibility on the web

There are 2 ways you can submit your RSS feed online;

1. Web Based: You can go to here and fill in all the relevant information regarding your feed and submit. This is a free service and it’s pretty effective. Also, if you do a little research on Google, you will find many sites like this one. You can also submit manually to the top 100 RSS Site list here.
2. Software: You can use PC-based software such as “RSS Submitter” to submit your feed automatically to hundreds of RSS sites. This one time submission might be very helpful in terms of visibility.

Before going through these steps, we recommend that you make sure you have a content rich site. Also, you must add content to your site regularly, this way you increase the number of content or articles syndicated and get even more visibility. You might have to manually create an RSS feed each time you update your site or articles using option 1a and 1b above. It still beats not doing anything about it.

The more you get into RSS, the more you will learn and see the benefits. Of course, including RSS Syndication along with a well-planned and executed online marketing strategy will be much more effective than just creating an RSS feed. Familiarize yourself with other online marketing and promotion tools. Of course, we are here to help. You can contact us for any questions or a no obligation consultation.

By Chris Crum

Email Research Firm Says Now Linked to More than Facebook

According to Email Data Source, Twitter has become the most linked to social media outlet in email marketing campaigns. Email Data Source collects, analyzes, organizes, and archives millions of marketing messages to provide competitive intelligence and analytics to the email marketing community.

“In the data Email Data Source has been tracking, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of email marketing campaigns that contain links to Facebook and Twitter,” says Bill McCloskey, chairman and co-founder of Email Data Source. “In fact, starting in 2009 twitter.com and facebook.com have become the two most prominent linked to sites in all of email marketing.”

So far this year, the number of campaigns with Twitter links has grown to 41,399 (with 41,052 for Facebook) according to the firm. Twitter officially passed Facebook in this regard back in March, they say.

“Since March, Twitter has continued to dominate the email marketplace by being the most prominently linked to website, and the gap between Twitter and Facebook has grown,” says Email Data Source. “In June, Twitter was linked to in 9,506 campaigns and Facebook was linked to in 8,636 campaigns.”

Those numbers are tremendously higher than they were a couple years ago as you might imagine. The first email campaign with a link to Twitter that was tracked by the firm was back in 2007, and for that entire year, there were 215 email marketing campaigns that linked to it. There were 729 linking to Facebook.

Our love of beauty isn’t just focused on the human body. We love well manicured lawns, beautiful sunsets, and gorgeous building architecture. Some of us even go to restaurants where the food is pretty. Face it, we are very visual people.

It strikes me as odd, that as much stock as we place in things that are wonderful to look at, we often don’t take as much care with our blogs. I understand that it’s not easy putting together a website that looks good. It takes effort, skill and often a good amount of money. So instead of doing what needs to be done we skimp. Blogs, on the other hand are far easier, it’s just a matter of finding a good theme and running with it. But for whatever reason, that often doesn’t happen.

We dress appropriately for our jobs but our blogs are going to work everyday in beat-up sweat pants and unkempt hair. It may not be an ugly site, but it certainly ain’t much to look at.

This brings me to a humorous aside. Over the years I’ve talked to dozens of people who run crappy looking websites but they refuse to make any type of aesthetic changes to them. Why? Because they continue to get the rare compliment on how beautiful their site is. I’ve had this syndrome myself and it can be quite comical. All it takes is a few compliments from people who don’t know any better (why trust the experts who do) and it’s clear that the world agrees your site is the web equivalent of Halle Berry in the movie Swordfish.

Believe me, it’s not.

I looked.

Twice.

Looking good and having site appeal

Having a good looking blog starts with having a good looking website design. It’s amazing how easy it is to throw up a blog. But putting one together that is visually appealing to your audience is often another matter all together. There’s more to a website or a blog than a header, side navigation, and a few images.

What looks good varies from industry to industry so don’t think this is all about being “pretty”. You want to look good for the audience you are trying to reach. Pink and flowery doesn’t work with a rugged outdoors blog. Hard-hats and burly men won’t work on a blog about women’s health. Well, maybe it does a bit, I don’t know.

The point is, you have to make your blog appealing to the audience it is intended for. You won’t have credibility selling scientific papers with images of half-naked models used in your each of your posts. Of course you might sell more if you include the pictures in the papers, but still, your credibility will be shot, and you’ll annoy your audience for having to explain to their wives that they only buy it for the articles.

Once you’ve got a good looking blog, there is a usability aspect that needs to work as well. The navigation, headings, content, visuals and images all need to work together to complete the package.

Nobody get’s excited about seeing paragraph upon paragraph of blog content. Or for that matter too many pictures with little textual value. There is a balance somewhere in between. Your text can be made more visually appealing by formatting your heading tags to stand out and get read. Use pictures to provide visuals to your words. If you’re are pimping your products or services use pictures to give your content meaning, clarity and further understanding of what you are selling.

Too much of any one thing is still too much. Your blog needs to be balanced. Visuals need content and content needs visuals. And there is no reason that either the content or visuals should not be visually appealing to the site visitor.

Your readers will come to your blog for the content. But if it’s not presented in a visually appealing way there will be some credibility loss. This is especially true if your blog is tied to your business website. Build a decent blog design that fits your target audience and appeals visually to them for the type of information they are coming back to read. When you make it easy on the eyes, you make it something that people will continue to come back for.

by Stoney deGeyter

Having a good headline, a good article and even a good-looking site isn’t always enough to maintain an audience. To keep people coming back to your blog day after day you have to go through the extra effort to keep your visitors interested in your content.

Think of your blog as a TV show. How many shows start out strong but can’t maintain the interest as time passes? I remember years ago watching the show Alias. It quickly became one of my favorite shows that I looked forward to watching each week. Then somewhere around mid second season it jumped the shark. (The post-Superbowl episode when SD-6 was brought down and the sexual tension between the two main characters… oh, never mind. Yes, I’m still holding a grudge!) Alias just as quickly became one of the many shows that I threw away.

While you don’t need to have sexual tension in your blog content (or an evil mastermind, for that matter) to keep people interested, you do need to have an element of anticipation. Your readers should want to come back and read what you have to say next. But unlike a TV show, the anticipation of each “episode” of your blog needs to provide a release, leaving the reader completely fulfilled.

Grab Attention

You need to open your blog with something that draws the reader in. When writing with search engines in mind this can often be a bit tricky. Stories often make the most compelling openings but they often lack the keywords that your audience needs in order to accept the post as valuable. If the story is short, it will grab the reader’s attention and quickly lead them into the “lesson” of the content.

You don’t have to have keywords in the opening paragraph for the search engines, but it can be an important part of gaining and maintaining long-term rankings. If you can integrate the keywords into the opening story then you’ve got the best of both worlds.

Story isn’t the only way to create a compelling opening. Sometimes getting right to the meat works best. Telling the reader the conclusion before you even tell them how you got there can get them invested into leaning how you came to that conclusion.

I suggest you pick up a few books or read some other blogs posts that address this topic specifically. You can write a compelling opening any number of ways, you just need to find what works best for you, your audience, and for each particular blog post.

Appeal to Needs

Once you have the reader interested in whatever you have to say, you need to keep them moving through the content, consistently delivering information that keeps them intrigued. Unless your blog is for entertainment purposes, readers want to feel as if they have learned something. Heck, even entertainment blogs educate their readers in some way or another. But each reader comes to your site with a basic desire. It’s your job to meet that desire.

With business blogs there are three things you need to do. 1) Expose the need, 2) State the solution and 3) Provide the benefits.

Expose the need: What is it you want your readers to walk away knowing after having read your post? Make sure you expose the need in language they understand using concepts and illustrations that are familiar to them.

State the solution: Next, provide a solution to that need. The solution must be clearly stated and accurately explained. What must the reader to to achieve X results? What steps must they take? What products must they buy? What services must they engage in? These are all solution oriented questions that can be answered for your readers.

Provide the benefits: Finally, the benefits of each solution bust be clearly outlined. There is no sense in showing someone what they need, and how to get it if they are not fully aware of the benefits of doing so. The benefit is the final selling point that tells the reader that they truly do need what you are offering and that you have the right solution for them.

Ask Questions

Just as I did two paragraphs above, ask your readers questions. Questions get them thinking about answers and then allows you to insert your knowledge and expertise in providing an answer. An answer for an unasked question is often far less potent as an answer to a question that the reader is already contemplating… even if it’s a question you set them up with.

Not every question needs an answer. Some questions are designed to get the reader to move beyond what you can tell them and to think in terms of their own situation. Ultimately, if you can help your readers think for themselves this makes what you have to say even more valuable.

Inform

Finally, you want to make sure that each blog post serves its ultimate purpose and adequately informs your readers. They must walk away feeling as if their time reading your blog post was well spent. Failure to inform leaves your readers wanting. And unlike a TV show, and with the exception of the occasional multi-part series, leaving readers wanting does not bring them back for the next episode.

Keeping your readers interested in your content really boils down to creating good content that your readers find, well, interesting. If you keep your readers interested they’ll keep coming for more.

By Jeremy Muncy

Numbers plummet as a result of the cleanup

Recently, Twitter announced that they were cleaning out spammers and addressing “data inconsistencies”. What does this mean for you, the Twitter user? You might see a significant drop in your following and follower numbers.

Did your Twitter follower count take a hit from this cleanup? Tell us.

Below you can see my modest counts pre-cleanup and post-cleanup. By the looks of it, I had 40 spam Twitter accounts following me.

“For some time, the follower and following counts we display have been incorrect for some folks. We’re soon to push a change that will address this issue. This means that the count you see in your sidebar should match what you see on your follower and following pages.

However, a consequence of this change is that follower counts will drop for some people. In particular, those with large followings may see significant changes as we correct for spam accounts and data inconsistencies. No legitimate followings should be affected—we’re just cleaning up artifacts in the system.”

Weblog Software: Still on the Edge
Over time, blogging moved from an edgy, mostly American phenomenon to a global, main-stream activity responsible for the lion’s share of the Web’s content — more than 133 million blogs were tracked by Technorati in 2008. The presence of blogs is apparent if not pervasive on search results and social media sites. The similarity to CMS (often a substitute) and the potential to influence conversations with consumers makes selecting weblog software, therefore, a critical business decision.

Weblog software is essentially designed to facilitate the creation, maintenance and syndication of blogs and their content. No matter the individual solution, features always include support for authoring, editing and publishing content entries, as well as the ability to easily create or edit titles and permalinks (URL structure) and post dates. Also commonly included is the presence of comment support, and categories or tags, and the support of trackbacks or pingbacks. These are the most basic, yet most important features of any weblog installation.

More advanced features include Web syndication (offered through RSS or Atom) capabilities, post moderation and even posting API’s, which can enable blogging from mobile devices via SMS or e-mail. Blogging directly from any number of third-party applications should also be available. For example, some blogging software solutions support plugins for Firefox, such as Scribefire that allows the user to post directly to their own blog from anywhere on the Web.

Much like other software, weblogs come in two varieties — open source and commercial/proprietary. There are hundreds of developer- hosted blogging platforms (e.g. blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, tumblr.com, Vox.com, even My- Space) for novice bloggers to use, but as individuals and companies gather some expertise and sophistication, there is often a shift towards more robust and customizable platforms. WordPress is ideal for open source advocates, or choose Compendium, a proprietary system that adds value to blog content marketing strategies in an innovative manner. Compendium takes a unique approach to blogging in that it’s built to support multiple bloggers and has a singular focus on leveraging that collective brainpower for the purpose of influencing the impact of search marketing and social media. Do never choose Movable Type, as it is paid and it is the worst solution in the market.

E-commerce Solutions: Sell, Sell, Sell
Merchants could not exist on the Internet without an e-commerce software solution. Instead of taking orders over the phone from consumers visiting static websites, e-commerce shopping cart software aids those making purchases online. But e-commerce solutions do much more than simply provide a means of displaying products and capturing a client’s payment information. The administration of products and users is an integral part of creating a profitable e-commerce enterprise.

E-commerce software is categorized into two types: licensed software and as a hosted service. Licensed software is similar to many of the open source platforms including OSCommerce and Magento because it is downloaded and installed on a Web server. The major advantages of licensed software are that the merchant owns the license and can host it on any Web server that meets their requirements.

A hosted service, on the other hand, is never downloaded. Instead, it is offered and supported by a hosted service provider such as Volusion — in this case, an application service provider or ASP, and paid for on a monthly or annual basis. This model often has predefined templates from which a user can choose to customize their individual look and feel. Users typically have less of an ability to modify or customize the software, but get the advantage of the vendor continuously updating the software for security patches as well as new features.

The most important features of e-commerce shopping cart software are the storefront and administration area. The storefront is where consumers will interact with a merchant’s products. Every storefront should offer search and the ability for the merchant to create products and the categories where they reside, as well as offer the ability to highlight featured products through the use of best sellers or “hot” items. E-commerce solutions differ wildly in scope and depth in their consumer interfaces — what merchants should consider is the interaction that shoppers will have on their site(s).

The administration section of an e-commerce solution should also be an area of great focus and attention. Often called store managers, they should enable the addition and editing of product features, establishing categories, implementing discounts, and the handling of shopping and payment settings through third party modules. While the vast majority of e-commerce solutions are now Web-based, there are a few holdouts for desktop-based applications.