toniCarr

Hi!  I just updated to wordpress 2.5. If you have a blog and have not done upgraded it is well worth it. The Dashboard has been updated and the control panel appears to be more user friendly. I am hoping that it has better capabilities for adding your own HTML that has always had some bugs.

On the write a post page they have added media buttons for image / video /audio / media. Under the title it shows the permalink that it will be posted as. I have not really traveled through the dashboard but on the write a post page it appears cleaner and more user friendly.

From what I can tell this is an upgrade you don’t want to miss. I may have missed a few upgrades from I was using 2.3.3.

Have a great week.

This morning I woke up and was unsure what day it was I don’t think I have ever had that happen, maybe “spring fever”. When I realized it was Saturday I was relieved the weekends are much to short. Should I go to yoga or should I go for a walk? The beautiful spring day beckoned me, yoga is great, my psyche needed to be outside. I grabbed my best buddie and off we went to Muir Beach. This is why I live in California, as expensive, crowded it may be nothing is better than a spring day on the beach. With my camera in hand I will share with you my walk from Muir Beach to Green Gulch Zen Center.

Self portrait, me and my buddy!	Muir Beach looking North.
	Muir Beach looking South.
	Ollie on the trail at Green Gulch Zen Center
If you look closely there are bike riders going into the canyon	the gardens ready to burst into bloom at Green Gulch Zen Center.
Prayer flags outside a green house at Green Gulch Zen Center	Buddha with bamboo
the yurt at Green Gulch Zen Center	Buddha and the dragonfly
a whimsical door window.	Buddha inside a potting shed

Wishing you a wonderful Spring and a Happy Easter Holiday.

Most people, especially small businesses  today have a website. Most very proud of their web presence and should be and naturally their websites bring them business. Many times in ways they never thought possible. But what  do they REALLY know about their website and what could be done differently? Until you emmerse (much like baptism) your site into search analytics you will never know.

Analytics is one method to get “personal” with your website. Common questions you should ask yourself: 

• Who is visiting your website?
• Where did they come from (referer)?
• How long are they staying on your site?
• What pages do they enter and exit your site?
• Are they submitting a contact form or buying a product (converting)?

How do you do this, without spending a lot of money on products that may not work?
I have tried different software packages (which I don’t want to get into here) and some do work, but right now my favorite is Google Analytics. Why? Because it is truly free and has great easy to read information. Google Analytics does take some time to learn and they say you get what you pay for, but I do believe it is worth the effort. I am now a “Google Analytics Junkie”.

Let’s get started with your website:

1. First you need a chunk of code to put on “every” page of your website that you wish to track. This is your tracking code. You can get this code by signing up for an AdWords account or if you have a gmail account use that as your user name/password (you don’t have to participate in AdWords). Here is the link to Google Analytics help center http://www.google.com/analytics/indexu.html
2. Now you are in your adWords account, this is really confusing. Across the top are tabs click on Analytics and that should get you started. “Create my free Google Analytics account”. Click on the continue>> button
3. Follow the directions on this page, submit >> accept the terms >>
4. Wallah - cut and past this code into your website right before the </body> tag on EVERY page you wish to track.
5. I know your lost, try the help center link above, it is worth your time and I know you can do it.

Now the fun begins watch the information roll in, give it some time. You will want to create what is known as the dashboard, personalize your dashboard.
Sample dashboard:

 This can be done by clicking through the information on the left hand navigation. For each category there is a button on the top of the page to either export / email / add to dashboard . Get familiar with these buttons. I have a report sent to me weekly with my dashboard information so that I do not have to login to find out what is going on and it gives me past week comparisons.

Some of my favorite information is: 

1. site useage 
2. the map overlay (where in the world are these visitors)
3. traffic sources overview  (where is all you traffic coming from)
4. content overview (what pages are most popular)
5. all traffic sources (who is referring to you)
6. Visitors overview (clicks per day, who is unique, how many page views…)
7. Now my favorite, setting goals and the funnel report

In each category you can get more and more granular, the best part - our friends at Google do it all for FREE!

Before I became a Google Analytics Junkie, I was THE original  Google Addict. My SEO addictions don’t appear to be going away. Does anyone know of a good 12 step program? Have fun and beware of the addictions.

Usability and the utility, not the design, determine the success or failure of a web-site.

read more about the principles of effective website design

Point #1 the golden rule - “don’t make your users think”

I just discovered this great website ColorsOnTheWeb.com .  They have a tool for picking colors that was developed over eight years ago. It has definitely stood the test of time. You pick the colors, the tool will determine matching colors for your selection.  I tried it and it appears to come up with a wonderful array of colors, not only for hue, but also saturation and tint and shade variations. This is can be a great time saver to determine the colors quickly in your style sheets (CSS) for heading tags,  links;  hover and active.

I can spend a lot of time tweaking colors in PhotoShop, it is almost amazing that photoshop does not do this for you automatically. Below is a screen shot of this FREE tool, note the make a donation box in the right hand corner? It is a good idea to donate something if you like or use the tool. Who knows the more you donate the better the tool.

Grab this swicki from eurekster.com

I just created my personal swicki on eurekster.com, this is fun click on one of the keyword above and see where it takes you (you will need your back button to come back) or type in your favorite search term. If you have a website create your own search portal around any topic. According to the website
“Rather than returning millions of results like a generic search engine, swickis learn from the search behavior of a community of enthusiasts and experts, making it easy for you to quickly find what you’re looking for within a particular topic. Another way of becoming a part of a community and it is FREE!
Of course they come in different flavors, add video, “Video swickis let you browse and watch the most popular videos within a particular topic.”  Build your own or grab one that has already been made.

Try it out, http://www.eurekster.com/ , if you need help let me know!!

Share my swicki with others here http://sem-seo-ssm-swicki.eurekster.com
I can invite others to grab by swicki for posting on their websites and blogs: http://www.eurekster.com/swickibuilder/share.aspx?swicki=sem-seo-ssm

SMXWest 2008

These are my notes from SMXWest 2008. Much of it is in shorthand. But if I did not do it in this fashion I would never get it out. I compare it to when you are in school and you needed to borrow a classmates notes. If you feel I got something wrong or it needs more definition please comment.

During the conference they had an open WiFi (provided by SEOMoz.org) and many participants had their computers open and were taking notes, others were chatting on IM, some were surfing the web, checking email; I think they call it multi tasking. I made a conscious decision that during the sessions I would not have access to my computer and that I would write my notes. This could be a generational thing, but for me personally I get distracted and do not get the full benefit.

Day One

  Keynote Speech by Danny Sullivan

  Search 3.0, Search 4.0 & Beyond

What was/is Search 2.0?

• Click through
• Links – aka pagerank
• Context = link text

The keywords “miserable failure” – who pops up #1 and Google kills it.

What is Search 3.0?

  Vertical search (what does that mean)

  Blended search, universal search, invisible tabs

  Vertical results are blended together

  Local / Video / News

Ask.com now has a 3 pane or column SERP

  Microsoft – LiveSearch LiveScopes

  Yahoo – shortcuts to upcoming events now introducing Yahoo! SearchMonkey

Search 4.0

  All about what you do personally, this currently is mainly done by Google

  Tracking your search history and where you go on the internet to come up with better “personalized” results. Gone are the days when everyone sees the same site rankings

  Since, everyone sees things differently therefore it takes in the information from your personalize search page i.e. iGoogle, you can turn personalized search off by logging out of google. You can also add three characters to the end of your search and it will not use personalized tracking. (I have to look through my notes to find the actual characters but I think it was “&pws”. Please don’t quote me on that because I am not sure.

One thing personalized search is missing is the human factor and that is how you are feeling at the moment.

Types of Social Searching:

• Social Search “swickis”
• Social Sites and social bookmarking: Digg, Delicious …
• Social Networking: Facebook, MySpace

The joining of SMM and SEO (the WonderTwins as they were referred to at the conference)

  Social Media Marketing and SEO:

• Builds links back to your content
• Authority sites
• New site needs to make use of Digg
• Delicious – number of people that have clicked on a page, book marked it in Delicious
• Google Reader – ranks how many have subscribed to an RSS Feed

Time to understand all of this now.

Search 5.0

  Two examples:

• Mahalo.com
• Hakia.com

Regarding the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft:

• Yahoo is a credible search engine and Microsoft needs the traffic
• This may give ask.com the opportunity to rise up

Yahoo made a search announcement at the conference.

• The search is more enhanced, you create your own apps.
• Bringing in media, photos, video…
• Task links
• Structured data of ratings and price, hours with addresses
• User choice (remove a listing or report it is spam)

This is about giving the user more control, another form of personalization, add or turn off enhancements

  Learn more about it at http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/open.html

  This is what Yahoo! claims:

  Everyone Wins.Site Owners:
Boost site traffic quality and quantity with visibly differentiated search results through this free program.
Searchers:A more relevant and efficient search experience with deep links, product reviews, prices, photos and more from preferred sites.
Get more information from http://www.ysearchblog.com
Different sites will provide search information, they feel there will be an open playing field for everyone not jus the Yahoo! Properties

Next  I will share my notes from additional sessions. 

Hear I am dusting off my blog, and I really mean dust it off  (phewwwww) I am currently at  SMX West and  once again getting the shot in the arm (ouch) to get back to work with my blog. Once I get the itch I write, but then life gets in my way.

My review, SMX has done a great job of knowing what people want to hear. The keynote speaches so far have been right on.  Danny Sullivan spoke on the first day about where search is going (always a good topic) and he did have a lot of relevant information, web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 …. infinity. What does it all mean. I think we are all struggling, and no one so far has the answer. The big buz is blended search, personalized search, yes just get noticed, (lift up your petti-coat). Mixing everything, from maps, images, videos, books, blogs condensed into one page and we don’t want to look like Costco.

One of the moderators Vannessa Fox, has a website VannessaFoxNude.com, having the word nude in her url you can imagine the ’great’ hits she must be getting. But truly that is what it is all about bearing our souls to each other, and doing in anonimously? 

Here I am with a new a shot in the arm, the orignial Google Addict once again learning how to position my search engine marketing. I am getting to old for this? Hopefully you will  read more, but wait I can’t stop now, I had a long conversation with a group of eBay boys (and they were cute) about how my experience with eBay has disolved. I started with eBay 8+ years ago when it was truly a community and I expressed to them how I feel eBay has lost that true communtiy feeling and that I miss it. There were a group of us with cottage industries that just got swallowed away by the “POWER SELLERS”.  ebay truly was one of the first social networks, that went wrong. What are your thoughts? 

I refuse to begin my blog post with “I haven’t written in my blog for a long time blah blah blah”. Obviously writing in my blog is not my forte. I always have great ideas and don’t seem to follow through. Today I am so moved to write about 301 redirects. This is not a post about how to do 301 redirects, believe me there are many of those out there. What I want to relate is the importance, the freak out factor and the search engine affect involved when one goes through the 301 redirect process, making a domain change or file change on their website.

When one gains ranking for a major keyword term, you never want to lose it. I am always checking Google to see how I or my clients rank for certain terms. As usual we go up, down but tend to stay in a pretty stable placement if we continue to update our sites and stay ahead of the competition.

Just recently I had a client that for one reason or another had to change their domain name for legal reasons, they shall remain unnamed. I walked this particular client through what needed to be done, so that they did not lose page rank or get dinged for duplicate content. We went through the painful process of implementing the 301 redirect on the site. Everything was working great, Google had not made the update but the redirect was working. Then the Google bomb drops!!!

Phone call, from client “I am on page 7 for my XXX keyword, so much for your 301redirect”. In the SEO business you either have clients that are thrilled with you or irate with you. In my humblest voice I told them not to worry that Google was making their adjustments and they would retain their old ranking when the dust settles. Maybe not #1 but, it would slowly work it’s way back up. Client “we will see, it was fun while it lasted, …. I have to go to an appointment.” –click– That was a week ago at most.

Today I did a quick look see and guess what, there they were, not #1 (as they had been) but #3. I just love this business!! Did I say “told you so”? It was tempting, my next suggestion to them, was to put up a blog posting or update a page using those precious keywords.

One thing SEO has taught me is how to take abuse politely and with wise patience. I will not allow Google to control my life; only my keywords.

I finally did it, I bit the bullet and bought Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 Master Collection. I have always been so resistant to purchasing each new software version. I actually have a mantra, “only every other year”. I also in the past have resisted purchasing Suites because I always found there were only a few programs that I use all the time. This is “Sweet” is truly a Cadillac (or a Toyota). With all the new interactive functions with websites my older versions of Flash etc. are proving to cost me more time and money.  I have not installed the new software,  just made the purchase and I feel like a little kid in a candy shop.

What does Adobe include? It is marketed as “Design Across Media” and combines all the best of the best if you ask me and I hope that Adobe has not screwed it up.  Why do I say that? A few years ago Adobe acquired Macromedia, so now they have a corner on not only the best graphics software but also website design tools. At my finger tips I will have bundleds together graphics and web design tools plus video/animation with After Effects, Premiere, Soundbooth and Encore. What a basket full of goodies, I am hoping it all integrates wonderfully and the learning curve is short or maybe a better way of putting it “pain free”.

A little side note, when I started designing websites, Adobe had just introduced Photoshop3, at that time there was approximately a 12 step (no pun intended) process to performing a drop shadow! People would do drop shadows just to prove their Photoshop skills. Then for web authoring this is one of my favorite stories I used a software program called “HotDog Pro” the help assistant was this little wiener dog , that would bark when you did something. I just Googled “HotDog Pro” and I was happy to see they now have HotDog Professional 7. You might want to check it out at Sausage Tools , the cost is quite a bit less than Adobe.