jon, Author at Outsource Force

Why We Can’t Just Be SEOs Anymore?

Posted on June 09, 2013 by jon

If you are a bit observant, you might have noticed something quite off in the practices and titles being used nowadays – from “SEO” to “online marketing”. Other terms replacing the word SEO include “inbound marketing”, and “earned media marketing”. Is this just a passing trend or is there a meaning to it? Let’s find out from Rand’s discussion on the special edition of Whiteboard Friday.

According to Rand, there’s a seeming shift in how SEO is regarded nowadays. Some people in the industry have been changing referring to their practice from ”doing SEO” to “doing online marketing”. The obvious ways “SEO” is avoided may anyone to think that there must be a reason behind such shift. And Rand happens to be one of the proponents of such shift even if he admitted being against it before. Claiming to seeing the bigger picture, Rand says he’d like everyone to see the same “bigger picture”.

While most people consider SEO as a big thing in the business sector at present times, the last three years haven’t been as big for SEO as it has been ten years before that. From the late 90s into the late 2000s, when you say SEO, people know the many different strategies and techniques you are gifted to know about – links, quality and relevant content, relevant keywords, site architecture, friendly user experience, snippets, etc. And all to get ahead in the name of search engine ranking.

SEO and Marketing

And in that sense, the SEO will have something to do with ranking factors such as keyword data, topic analysis, link graph data, domain data, etc. Search engines were designed to look these ranking factors plus the user and usage data. This means they also look at brand signals, offline data potential or social graph indicators. And SEOs will have to do everything that is actually marketing, if they were to influence those factors that affect search engine rankings. Everything means social media/community building, branding, positioning, email marketing, conversion rate optimization (CRO), unique value of content, and product. For an SEO to move up rankings in major search engines like Google and Bing, they need to be able to control and influence the search engines in ways that are massively greater than what’s done in the past.

Disassociate SEO from Bad Perception

Rand says that there is a desire to disassociate the word SEO with bad companies’ irresponsible behavior and scumminess. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy to change the perception of SEO because it has been established and going on for such a long time now that no effort can easily shake it off from the bad reputation it carries. Despite every effort exerted by a few in the field desiring to try and change such perception, the obnoxious reputation associated with bad hat SEO remains.

For many who are involved in SEO, it could be truly frustrating and irritating to hear a generalization on SEO as being a spammer, a manipulator of things, unethical, breaking search engine’s rules, etc. These are the things SEOs have to deal with every time they have a client. And the clients cannot be faulted for thinking that way also. The primary and first association that most people have with search engine optimization is a spammy email that’s been sent numerous times trying to get them to sign up for something, or the comment spam on their blogs. And with that point of view, every malicious or bad thing happening on the internet is blamed on the poor SEOs.

The Need for a New Title

Rand continued to say that even he, in the early days of SEO, had done some share of spammy and manipulative things. Because at that time, that’s what most SEOs do. And when enough realization along with updated search engines algorithm forced SEOs to do the optimization properly, the perception seemed to have stuck in the minds of those who knew about the trade. The perception is glued to the term or the title. Hence, Rand says that it may be necessary to change the title because with such change, perception is also changed. So instead of saying, “I do SEO”, you say, “I do web marketing”, then people get the idea and accepts the connotation that goes with it. “So it’s web marketing; it’s not SEO”.

This is the real thing and this is the future of search and search engine optimization. Here’s an article about the recent algorithm update made by the search giant, Google.

Another perception that needs to be disassociated with SEO is that which sells short of what is really offered. Too many times, management finds it hard to comprehend that SEOs need to influence all the other fields such as the web design, the social media and ad campaigns. They seem to think that SEO is just focused on creating contents, links on the contents, keywords on the contents, etc. There is very little understanding on why SEOs need to meddle with all those things. And to change that kind of thinking, it should not be referred to as SEO.

And in closing, Rand highlights that SEO regardless of the perception will continue to change – tomorrow, next week, or the week after next. It’s the one thing about SEO that is constant – change. A kind of change that is actually positive in serving people the quality of information they deserve. Every field matures and improves. And then you get to a better stage. The challenge is therefore on one’s commitment to continue SEO along with good branding and marketing. And to be able to do that and get people to believe that commitment may potentially require taking on other titles that would express ways that could get more influence, and at the end of the day, bigger paychecks as well.

Look at the prevailing market price difference between an SEO consultant and a business strategy consultant (someone from Accenture or the like). The SEO consultant charges between $50 to $100 dollars an hour while the business strategy consultants can charge as high as $1000 plus an hour. This clearly shows that the more influence you have, the better your billing is. With an enhanced title that sways away from the not-so-good-perception of what search engine optimization is all about combined with an honest-to-goodness result-oriented commitment to the client of how your influence can change their business or brand, you get a better chance of acceptance from the critics of SEO in general.

Google Glass Specs Revealed

Posted on June 03, 2013 by jon

Since its first appearance, Google Glass remained an innovation of little or unknown specifications. No one really knew about the head gear’s so-anticipated futuristic details. Finally, straight from Google’s HQ in Mountain View, California, the technical specifications are out in the open. For one, Google Glass will now be commercially called as “Glassware”.

The futuristic head gear’s frames are equipped with 16GB Flash memory – with only 12GB as usable space; 5 megapixel camera, 720p video recording, Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth and a battery which is said to last 1 full day for typical use. More details of such tech specs are below:

Camera. Google Glass can take 5 megapixel still photos and can shoot 720p videos.
Storage. Google Glass has 12GB of usable memory, synced with Google’s Cloud Storage for a total of 16GB.
Display. The Google Glass’ high resolution display is equivalent to a 25 inch High Definition (HD) screen from eight feet away.
Audio. Bone conduction Transducer.
Fit. It has adjustable nose pads and durable frame that fits any face. Extra nosepads in two sizes are also available.
Connectivity. Google Glass is Wi-Fi – 802.11b/g and Bluetooth enabled.
Battery. If fully-charged, Google Glass will last for one full day of typical use. If using some features such as Hangouts, video recording will require more battery usage, thus reducing battery life.
Charger. A micro USB cable and charger is included. Glassware is designed and tested with specific charger in mind – Google Glass’ life cycle is preserved long.
Compatibility. The unit is compatible with any Bluetooth-capable phone. A companion app, “MyGlass” which enables GPS and SMS messaging requires Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich or higher.

While the technical specs of Google Glass have already been released, the technology giant’s innovative wearable computer is not commercially available yet. Google Glass is designed to perform tasks similar to those performed by smartphones. The only difference being the ability of Google Glass to respond to voice commands instead of fingers manipulating a display screen.

The hands-free eyewear allows the user to take pictures or record video anytime, anywhere. Internet searchers will only need to issue voice commands for specific piece of information needed.

To sum it up, Google Glass has everything a tech-savvy person will surely enjoy. But that’s not all there is to this revolutionary gadget. Google is now working on the design of Google Glass for prescription frames. This will give those who wear prescription glasses the opportunity to wear Google Glass.

The Google Glass design is made modular to allow adding frames and lenses that match the person’s prescription. The Google Glass prescription frames are expected to be out in the market later this year.

To fully grasp what this high-tech glass can offer, you can refer to this article.

The Future of SEO with Penguin 2.0

Posted on May 26, 2013 by jon

When Google’s Matt Cutts first made the announcement about the coming of a new Penguin generation in March, webmasters have been on their alert mode waiting when Penguin 2.0 will hit the Google search results. Apparently, Google officially started rolling out Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013. With such roll-out Cutts expects for the new Penguin 2.0 to have a significant impact on web spam. Instead of just looking at the home page of a site, the new Penguin goes much deeper, with big impact on small areas. Cutts said that the new Penguin 2.0 will affect 2.3 percent of English-US queries and even non-English queries as well. According to Cutts, the scope of the Penguin webspam algorithm varies by language. He said that languages with more webspam will definitely feel the impact of the new Penguin.

Penguin 2.0 is more of an internal reference because this is an updated algorithm and not just a data refresh, the fourth Penguin-related launch which Google has done. It is a webspam update dedicated to finding and addressing black-hat webspam. Penguin 2.0 is a lot more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0.

What this update means for white-hat SEOs is nothing as heavy an impact for black-hat webspams. Cutts basically emphasized that webmasters should keep making great sites that users love that they will want to tell their friends about. Sites are encouraged to compel website visitors to bookmark it, come back to it repeatedly, subscribe to it, etc. The goal is to make it known that your site has a lot of good and quality information to offer.

What-hat SEOs will be supported by Google in promulgating white-hat practices as they work hard to make certain that your quality content shows up in the search engines results page for users to find, visit and consume. That’s Google’s end of the bargain. For the webmasters, they should work hard in making certain that their sites have what it takes to please the users.

Cutts briefly outlined what SEO webmasters can expect from the new Penguin 2.0 throughout the summer of 2013. They are:

Penguin 2.0 targets Advertorials. This includes paid advertising that violates Google’s Quality Guidelines. If someone pays for coverage or advertising, those ads should not flow pagerank. Google is determined to be stronger in enforcing this change as a move forward. Pagerank is not something that should be bought or sold. Advertorials are okay for as long as they don’t flow pagerank and that there should be clear and conspicuous disclosure so that users would know that something is paid and not organic.
Google is also working on ways to deny the value to link spammers. Cutts said they are working on a different system that does more sophisticated link analysis.
Google still continues to work on hacked sites by trying to detect them better through a more next generation of hacked site detection that is more comprehensive, and trying to communicate better with webmasters. Google is looking at establishing a one-stop-shop where webmasters can go and report if their sites have been hacked, use appropriate webmaster tools that will point them to the right way of cleaning their hacked site.
Google will give higher value in terms of pagerank for authority sites detected which they determine to be genuinely authoritative in their niche.

To sum it up, the new Penguin 2.0 will not so much affect webmasters that are following Google’s guidelines in terms of white-hat SEO practices. The new Penguin update is more targeted at webmasters that continue to violate the Quality Guidelines of Google and who have completely junked white-hat SEO practices and opted for the spammy practices.

FirstQuarto

Posted on May 20, 2013 by jon

Blogs on almost any topic have flooded today’s online world. And still, online users can’t get over wanting for more, for newer contents. So where can you find new contents or blogs on interesting and unique subject matter? And if you are the content creator, how can you get your blog to people who are hungry for new information? With millions of blog sites afloat on the World Wide Web, what boundary or time zone do you have to cross over to get to the other side where people can enjoy your original content, and eventually share it with other people?

There is only one answer to that – FirstQuarto. This was developed by an IIT Delhi graduate, Prasenjit Singh, that allows users to post original content in the form of articles, opinions, commentaries, blog-posts, reviews, etc. and lets fellow users to rate, share and publicize your contents. FirstQuarto provides email and Facebook login to the site. Pass the authentication process and you’re directed to FirstQuarto’s home screen right away.

There are four major sections on FirstQuarto’s home screen, namely Top; Latest; Bistro; and Write.

The “Top” Section

This is where you can find the most popular articles based on ratings and comments by fellow users. You can check the articles for ratings, followers, comments, etc. If you want to read the articles at a later time, one click is all it needs.

The “Latest” Section

This feature is more or less similar to the “Top” section. Clicking “Latest” button will get the system to pull out all the latest articles and their relevant details.

The “Bistro” Section

This is where activities of the community you follow on this network are displayed. Click “Bistro” and you can view all the recent activities sorted by “ratings”, “followers”, and “comments”. Most visited articles appear on top to let you know what the people in your circle have been busy with recently.

The “Write” Section

This section is where the obvious is done – writing your content and posting it in the editor. It’s a comprehensive editor with all the features you need to edit your piece, including posting anonymously. It also has a feature that allows you to tell people you’re not up for any rating for your article. Unchecking the option in the editor will stop the rating activity.

With all four sections on the home screen, you think you have accomplished your mission – to be able to share your new blogs to like-minded people. Not quite. FirstQuarto allows you to link your existing blogs and follow categories based on your declared interests. So, if you are into global warming stuff, you can select the category, read the articles and follow bloggers with same interests as yours.

FirstQuarto also allows users to be flexible with messaging and creating profile where your snapshot, personal details and activities are provided, including all articles posted, rated, categories following, number of followers and following. Individual profiles can be manually updated, or to make things easier, just connect via Facebook and your profile details are fetched from your Facebook account.

The Challenges

Developers of FirstQuarto are focusing on adding more features to the site and building up its user base, which may not be that difficult to achieve considering the different platform it offers to users. The biggest challenge would be avoiding copyrights infringement and plagiarism even as it encourages creating and posting only of original contents. It has a feature called “automated checkers” already incorporated into the system to take care of these concerns. Hopefully, it will be enough safeguard against duplicate or copied contents.

Another challenge would be against Floost, which practically has the same features plus a fantastic design. But FirstQuarto’s networking ability far exceeds Floost and other blogging networks like IndiBlogger and Blogadda. What would be interesting to see are the new features the network will strive to bring in the future to keep its position strong.

Effects of Iframe on SEO

Posted on May 13, 2013 by jon

Iframe is the coined term for “Inline Frame” which means an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website. In simpler terms, it is a frame to display another webpage on a page. The Iframe HTML element is often used to insert content from another source such as an advertisement into a web page.

An Iframe can contain a portion or all of the content on a page as they are used often to show information from another site or a frequently updated content. Iframes are frequently used on websites that they have become almost a permanent fixture on the web page. And it’s because they can be as seamless as they can get as they easily blend with the rest of the web page. Unfortunately, it’s not the same case for search engine crawlers.

Iframe Cannot Be Crawled

Unlike on-page content, an Iframe cannot be crawled by the search engine crawlers and this fact can have a significant impact on SEO especially if the information needed by users is contained within the Iframe. While the information can be seen by the users of the web page, such content will most likely not get crawled. And that means your SEO efforts will go down the drain because the content on the page within the Iframe will not be indexed for search results ranking. Even if the “Iframed content” is keyword-rich, it’s not likely to rank in Google.

In the unusual case where web crawlers were able to enter an Iframe, when they start crawling the Iframe, they may not get out of the Iframe to crawl the rest of the site. Again, this is not good for SEO because the other pages on the website may not be indexed at all if the crawlers are trapped within the Iframe. Ranking-wise with Google, your site will fail.

Solutions

Despite the mentioned SEO-limiting qualities of Iframe, there are other solutions to Iframe which are friendlier with search engine crawlers. If you are using Iframes to present the information on your site, use content from another source. Search engine crawlers can detect the source of the information and they are not labeled duplicate by the crawlers. Instead, they will give the credit to the original source.

Another way to counter the SEO limitation is by writing your own keyword-rich, relevant and useful content, and post it on your website using a <div> tag which can be customized with a scrolling function to look just like the Iframe that was there before. Instead of pulling content from another website to the Iframe, you can use your unique content posted on your own website. Your visitors will barely notice the difference but Google’s engine crawlers will suddenly see you as a valuable source of unique and interesting topics and Google will rank you accordingly for that.

For web developers or programmers, they can use server-side or client-side programming, which requires a more advance understanding of programming principles. Using this solution, the content will appear as though it originated from the page even if it is being pulled from another source. In effect, the content will be crawled and it could improve the page’s rankings with Google. While this solution is possible, it is considered a Black Hat SEO technique and therefore not recommended.

To sum it up, if the foremost interest is SEO, Iframes should be avoided by all means. It can only help with your SEO efforts if you are pulling the content from your own website or domain to display on other pages. This can be useful if you want to share info on multiple pages without the risk of getting labeled as duplicate content.

It is also important to make sure that you maintain keyword-rich and crawl-able content on your site. If you are using Iframes on your site, you should always check to see if the pages have been crawled. You should remove the content from the Iframes if they have not been indexed. Place the removed content from Iframes on the web page (out of the Iframe). As everybody knows, strong on-page content will help boost the site’s rankings.

The Difference between Crowdsourcing and Outsourcing

Posted on May 06, 2013 by jon

The word “crowdsourcing” was first use in writing by Steve Jurvetson in February 2006 to describe “a collective effort to manage an online discussion forum on Flickr.” In June 2006, a Wired Magazine contributing editor came out with the first definition of “crowdsourcing” in a blog post to his Wired Magazine article.

Crowdsourcing is now used by a lot of people who need a collective effort from a crowd of people in getting work or funding done which is usually online. The term is coined from the two words “crowd” and “outsourcing”. The idea is to distribute tasks to a large group of online people in order to solicit intelligence and assess the quality of work in parallel. It is often used to subdivide tedious work or to raise funds for start-up companies and charities. The combination of efforts from crowds of volunteers or part-time workers adds up to a relatively large or significant result.

One famous example of crowdsourcing is Wikipedia, where instead of Wikipedia owners hiring their own writers and editors, the crowd is enjoined to create the information on their own resulting to the most comprehensive online encyclopedia the world has ever known.

Capitalizing on the principle of “more heads are better than one”, any task becomes comprehensive, wide-ranging and far-reaching. Imagine what will result from a combined ideas, skills, information, and participation from a host of people of varied background – superior quality content and idea.

Outsourcing

On the other hand, outsourcing is the process of contracting out an internal business process to a third party organization specialized in specific task or work, in exchange for payment for the services rendered. Businesses find this process more cost effective than maintaining in-house employees to do the task.

The term “outsourcing” was popularized in the United States near the turn of the 21^st century when several businesses started contracting out some of the in-house business functions such as IT, payroll and accounting, general maintenance, and advertising and marketing services. Outsourcing can both be foreign and domestic contracting which means the third party service provider can be from another country.

This practice has been around for as long as work specialization has existed. In most cases, the outsourced function is usually not related to the core business. An insurance company, for example, might outsource its janitorial and landscaping operations, or the IT maintenance services, which are both considered non-core to the business. Large manufacturing companies outsource the catering services for its workers to third party service providers.

In recent years, outsourcing has included even the narrow functions such as billing and data entry, payroll services, or human resource recruitment. These processes are handled in more efficient and more cost-effective ways by service providers that are specialized in carrying out such tasks. These providers have specialized tools, software programs and systems, facilities, and specially trained personnel for the specific tasks and functions they offer.

The most common and popular forms of outsourcing include ITO or Information Technology Outsourcing and BPO or Business Process Outsourcing. BPO includes call center outsourcing, human resources outsourcing, accounting and finance outsourcing, internet marketing outsourcing, and claims processing outsourcing.

NextDoor

Posted on April 28, 2013 by jon

Social networking is like interacting with your neighbors. You communicate with them; tell them a bunch of stuff about your activities, or the children, or your husband, or what have you. They’re your neighbors – you ought to know them, and they ought to know about you, right?

A new “private” social network is brewing with the grand objective of connecting you to your neighbors online, and yes, offline, too. It could have been set off by the fact that in today’s world, most people don’t know their neighbors at all, or don’t even have a way to contact them in case of an emergency. And this new social network, NextDoor hopes to use the social media platform to redefine the concept of neighborhood or community.

The Concept of Neighborhood

NextDoor embraces the idea that the neighborhood is one of the most important communities in a person’s life. It recognizes the many ways neighbors can help each other, and NextDoor was pretty much born from that concept. This California-based Menlo Park startup NextDoor was founded by Nirav Tolia, a tech industry expert. NextDoor was founded in the fall of 2010 and launched in October of 2011. NextDoor allows neighbors within certain regions to create private websites where they can post local information and events for everybody’s consumption. Neighbors can exchange information as a way to getting to know each other better. It serves as a meeting place for neighbors to interact in even the most trivial need like borrowing a ladder to the more serious information sharing about current events happening and exchanging business recommendations. The venue welcomes just about anything useful to be shared with each other.

NextDoor Registration Verification

Registration on NextDoor requires real name and real physical address as these data will be verified in one of four ways:

A postcard will be sent to the address with a unique code
A phone call will be made to a listed number at said address
Linking the person to the billing address of the credit card registrants are required to provide
Providing invitation from a previously verified neighbor.

This methodology was apparently inspired by Facebook in its early roll-out days when it required specific email addresses to allow people to access university-specific networks within Facebook. In the end, despite the initial hostile reaction, people felt more comfortable.

After passing verification, approval for membership will be granted along with the access to an array of information including message boards, maps, even a lost and found corner, and all of these are loaded up with information shared by like-minded members of the community.

Neighborhood Registration

The network size is set up by the first person to add the region to the site. This is done using a drawing tool provided by NextDoor allowing users to mark their neighborhood boundaries over a Google map. Boundaries are expected to change as the group grows to a typical network size of about 50 to 20,000 households. But this, of course will depend on the density of the geographic region.

Is there a Place for NextDoor in the Social Media Community?

Following its launch in 2011, a lot of people expressed skepticism on how NextDoor would fare in the market considering a number of social media sites already dominating the market. It was as if, NextDoor didn’t really have a space in social networking to thrive let alone survive the competition. Apparently, the company sees it a different way – believing that the unique relationship among neighbors is not a reason to hook up in Facebook or add in Google+ Circles, but a good reason to hook up in NextDoor. For this reason, NextDoor integrates a feature allowing users to print semi-custom flyers to invite neighbors to join the site. NextDoor will also send personalized postcards to a user’s neighbor on his behalf.

Technorati, a tech blog site says that over half a million messages are posted daily, practically on anything – from missing dogs to babysitter referrals, to garage sales and other stuff. There are over 8,000 US neighborhoods already registered with NextDoor, and according to Tolia, about 40 neighborhoods are added every day. If the trend continues, NextDoor is looking at an international expansion soon.

NextDoor’s new features also allow police and fire departments to blast urgent updates to members via text message. A recently retired assistant police chief of Ventura, Quinn Fenwick said that NextDoor is being used by the city’s force to broadcast weekly crime statistics. According to Fenwick, the city force draws more residents than the department’s usual neighborhood watch campaigns. The increasing awareness it generated cannot be dismissed and other neighborhoods can use NextDoor for similar purpose.

Who are the Giants Behind NextDoor?

There are a few business giants backing up Nextdoor through a $22 million funding. Investors include Benchmark Capital and Shasta Ventures; Zillow’s co-founder and chairman, Rich Barton; Greylock Partners; Google (GOOG) Ventures; Bezos Expeditions – the personal investment firm of Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos. NextDoor’s current registration figures is highly attributed to this huge capital infusion.

The Future for NextDoor

Currently with 22 employees, NextDoor makes no revenue at this point although it plans to generate revenue by allowing local merchants to advertise their products and services on the site. At this time, Tolia said that the company is not focused on producing profits. That would come in eventually. They simply appreciate the rapid adoption of NextDoor by neighbors across the country.

Greylock’s Managing Director, Mr. David Sze said his firm’s investment of more than $15 million in the new round is the single biggest check he has written in a round of financing. He sees real potential for NextDoor to be another Facebook or LinkedIn, very soon.

NextDoor can easily be the social network for any neighborhood as it has all the elements of being the next great socially-valuable network.

The Google Glass

Posted on April 22, 2013 by jon

Sometime in February 2013, Google started a social media campaign for Twitter and Google+ users, asking them to share their ideas on what they would do if they had Google Glass – Google’s latest technological innovation through the futuristic, Internet-connected glasses which display digital information right in front of the user’s eyes. The campaign hopes to select the best response who will in turn receive the Explorer version of the Google Glass.

Google Glass is described by Wikipedia as “a wearable computer with a head-mounted display or HMD developed by Google in the Project Glass research and development project”. The ultimate objective of the project is to produce a mass-market universal computer. It’s basically a computer worn on your head which can provide you with the information you need in a smartphone-like but hands-free format. The smart thing about Google Glass is its ability to interact with the Internet through voice commands.

The Explorer Edition of Google Glass which will be given to about 8,000 Twitter and Google+ users who have been selected through the social media campaign they launched in February cannot be used by those who wear prescription glasses. Google, however have considered partnering with sunglass retailers such as Ray Ban or Warby Parker and alongside with that, have sorted out plans to work with frames and lenses that match the user’s prescription. Part of Google’s plan is to open retail stores that will allow customers to try on the Google Glass.

The pair of augmented reality high-tech eyewear that can take pictures, record video of whatever the user sees and wants to record, and send text messages. A lot of tech experts are counting high on Google Glass as an important innovation that could give the smartphone a good competition and run for its money.

A Georgia Tech professor and Google Project Glass adviser has envisioned widespread consumer adoption for the Google Glass, creating a lifestyle change – one that would give people power and make them efficient and calmer. Things can be done with less and less interruptions.

While “techies” are on all-out support for Google Glass, there are some hurdles that the project has to overcome especially from privacy experts and lawmakers who are expressing concern for the project. For example, a new law, which is apparently aimed at Project Glass, in West Virginia, could make it illegal to drive while wearing Google Glass. In Seattle, certain bars forbid patrons from wearing the Google Glass as well. An outright ban on the product is being sought by one activist group.

Majority of the concerns stem from the device’s ease of discreet recording, which would violate the “two-party consent” law implemented in certain states like Washington, California, and Nevada. In these states, it is illegal to record a conversation unless everyone agrees.

It will all boil down to having control of the device and not misusing the device as in recording in reprehensible way. The device has a signal on the glasses that show when it is recording which is unlike the smartphone put inside the pocket while recording. With Google Glass, you always know when somebody is wearing the device and using it.

It’s Not All about Domain Name

Posted on April 14, 2013 by jon

A domain name is a name assigned to identify a specific website on the World Wide Web. It is like a person’s mailing address – the domain name is the website’s way to tell people where to find it.

Exact Match Domain and SEO

A website address comprised of keywords which are not the brand or company name is called an Exact Match Domain or EMD. Such keywords should match the search query words precisely. If you want to create a website targeting the keywords “top world attractions”, the EMD of the website will be topworldattractions.com. With an EMD, ranking in search engines is boosted, as keywords are featured in the domain name and therefore easily detected and indexed by search engines.

Exact match domains have offered a competitive advantage for SEOs who understood how to use them. EMDs represent what SEOs do best – achieve search engine ranking for the site. EMD is an excellent strategy to get the pages to rank well on Google and other search engines.

When EMDs are Not Helping SEO

One must understand that some marketers try and play a trick on search engines by using single dashed and multiple dashed EMD to contain keywords to boost a company’s page ranking and not to provide the user with valuable and useful information. EMDs used for such purpose will not help boost the site’s page rankings because Google had updated their algorithms in order to weed out low quality EMDs in their search results.

Multiple Dashed Domains

Statistics have proven that domains having more than one dash are in most cases in real life, spammy. As such, you should not use double dash domains for your website since it may be included in those marked or labeled spammy by search engines like Google, even if the site has valuable and relevant content to the search query. Domain names with multiple dashes are often linking to companies trying to trick search engines to get good page ranking using the search keywords.

Single Dashed Domains

While some websites with single dash domain names have ranked well with search engines, SEO experts are of the opinion that single dash EMDs also provide very minimal advantage over a non-keyword domain and must therefore be ruled out just the same.

Number of Keywords in EMD

According to Matt Cutts of Google, quality domain names should have 2 to 3 keywords for a domain name on “.net”, or “.org”, and 3 to 4 for “.com” and this will be effective for EMDs to boost the website’s ranking. You go beyond these numbers and you will send signals to alarm search engine crawlers to suspect the site as spammy.

Google’s latest algorithm update which targeted low quality domain names have affected a lot of sites with EMD. As Google focuses more towards organic search, search engine bots now consider most sites with multiple and single dashed EMDs worthless or of low quality.

To fight off the effects of such algorithm update, website owners should focus on the site’s content and not on the EMD as having an EMD with single and multiple dashed domains might result in the washout of years of hard work. The way to counter this is by buying a new domain and start afresh by transferring data from the EMD site to the new website before finally phasing out the EMD site. You could use redirects if search engines still cache your old website or if the old site still have value. You can check here how redirection works and which one to use. Introduce the new website to users and focus on building a better brand through building up quality links and quality content.

Despite the sweeping effects of Google algorithm update on EMDs, if the content and information on the website is relevant and useful for the end user, EMDs may still enjoy certain benefits for their websites. They can still help attract social mentions with keywords or keyword anchor text. They can also still help in the marketing and branding of a website.

MSN Socl

Posted on April 08, 2013 by jon

The power of social networking is undoubtedly recognized by every soul involved in online marketing. It’s precisely the reason for the phenomenal success of Facebook and Twitter, with a few more trailing behind. For its part, Microsoft’s offer is Socl, MSN’s own version of social media site. In early December last year, MSN invited those who have Microsoft and Facebook accounts to register to its new project Socl. It was launched in beta version in 2011 for Microsoft employees and college students until its December 2012 launch.

This prompts everyone to ask if there is room for another social network where it is already dominated by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus.

According to Microsoft, Socl is more like Pinterest than Facebook, and not exactly a traditional social network everyone is so familiar with. Socl has photo-filled landing pages which was an upgrade from the beta version, which was less heavy with images. Socl was a product of Microsoft Research FUSE Lab’s research into social search for students.

With the recently launched new version, anyone qualifies to register and find content randomly on Socl’s homepage or search by topic using Bing. If you want to create a post, contents – photos, links, videos, etc., from other sites can be retrieved and Socl will put together a collage for you.

“Riff” is a term used if you want to comment on other’s posts and share related links and images. The profile page is a gallery of the posts created and the interests and people you follow. There are no wall posts and no 140-character tweets.

Socl pays more attention on content than friends. Socl will find your Facebook friends if you register using your Facebook login data. But the site urges people to explore and connect with others based on common interests and posts.

Socl vs Facebook?

Because of the high prominence of Facebook in social networking, a lot of people are wondering whether Socl is intended to give Facebook some competition. People at Microsoft claims Socl shares not much similarity with Facebook but is more of Pinterest type. Socl, like Pinterest, seems more into browsing random photos rather than communicating with friends.

Microsoft is aware of the limitations of Socl. The company describes it as an “experimental research project with a minimal set of features”, and not designed or developed to compete with already established social networks. Microsoft is making an attempt to create a unified and cross-platform ecosystem that is not limited by hardware (Surface tablets) and software (Windows 8), search engines (Bing), and social network (Socl). Viral ad campaigns and Twitter stunts are used by the company to get the experimentation off the ground.

With all issues clarified and explained, people are wondering if Microsoft can make that transformation from an old fashioned image to enter a new era of touch and social technology. How Socl fares in the months to come will likely give the answers.

Socl being considered as a social media site, it does give social media a new feel. With content or useful information being searched by millions every day, it is not surprising that Microsoft bite into this kind of social media presentation.

If you’re an internet marketer and is currently on the look for new ways to spread your content through social media, then, Socl could be a possible option. To know how social media plays an important role in SEO, take a look at this article.