…and they’re costing you some SERIOUS search engine traffic.

Worst of all, you may even think that these mistakes help you…even though they put a stainless steel ceiling on your site’s potential to rank and earn.

But what if I told you that fixing these mistakes only takes a few minutes of work…and could double or triple your traffic in a few weeks?

You’d be pretty psyched right?

But what ARE these 5 mistakes and how can you fix them?

That’s coming right up…

But First, The Key To Getting a Tidal Wave of Search Engine Traffic

If you’re serious about dominating the SERPs, you can’t follow the latest trends like a 5th Avenue fashion designer.

After Penguin, everyone in SEO came to the conclusion that:

“You can still build crap links…you just need to diversify anchor text.”

(You can see why that theory is crap in my post about Google TrustRank)

But to me, diversifying anchors treats the symptoms and not the disease…the disease of trying to rank using latest spammy backlink strategy.

The algo changes.

SEO changes.

Google changes.

But creating a link magnet is pretty much the same as it was in the early days of the web.

That’s what makes fixing these mistakes so powerful.

These are time-tested ways of getting more backlinks and more traffic that…(wait for it) never stop working!

So let’s get to them.

Dumb SEO Mistake #1: Spammy Looking Site

I can’t believe how many sites scream:

“I’m just another spammy mini-site…

…please click away as fast as possible. And whatever you do, don’t ever link to me!”.

Contrary to what you may have heard, spammy looking sites DON’T convert well.

And they make link building damn near impossible.

So why do so many people still pump out crappy-looking sites?

Because people think that:

Crappy Design=High Conversion Rate

Give them ads up the wazoo — the thinking goes –and they’re bound to click one of them.

Wrong.

About a year ago, one of my high-ranking money sites was plastered with Adsense blocks above the fold.

I looked something like this:

Nasty, right?

Sure, my CTR was pretty good…but (as you can see) the site looked absolutely hideous.

One day I decided to redesign the site so it looked legit…

…and similar to this site:

(Obviously I don’t own these sites in the examples. But they’re eerily similar to my actually site’s old and new design).

What happened?

My CTR blasted up by 30%.

And my bounce rate went from this:

to this:

As described at SocialTriggers, people largely evaluate your site based on DESIGN…not content.

And people that see a shady site DO NOT click on ads…they click away.

But CTR and bounce rate should be the least of your worries if you’re site looks like garbage.

In the not so distant past you could blast a site with blog comments and profile links to the top of Google…and it didn’t matter if your site was ugly as sin or could win a beauty pageant.

No more.

To rank (and stick) today you need high-quality, authority links.

And you’re not going to get them if you have a generic WordPress template with 7 ad blocks above the fold.

Remember: Outbound links reflect on the site owner. And no authority site is ever going to link to a site that looks spammy.

Quick Fixes:

1. Get Rid of Adsense: I don’t care if Google owns it: Adsense looks spammy. Monetize with CPA, ClickBank or your own product. You’ll open up a world of design options that will allow you to aggressively market, while maintaining a legit-looking site.

2. Evaluate your site’s design from a first-time visitor perspective:What would your Mom think if she stumbled upon this site? Would she share it with her Facebook friends or click away as fast as possible?

3. Hire a pro designer: Want to make link building 300% easier? Make your site look and feel legit. Seriously. True story: I got a dofollow testimonial link from a PR8 site yesterday and it never would have happened if my site looked spammy.

Dumb SEO Mistake #2: Lazy On-Page SEO

There’s a lot more to on-page SEO then title tags and keyword density.

And if you just slap a bunch of low-quality outsourced content on your site, you’re making SEO harder than it has to be.

Remember: on-page isn’t just about relevancy.

Panda was able to pinpoint crappy content from a mile away…without looking at a single backlink (unlike Penguin).

And based on a recently leaked Google Quality Guidelines document, your site’s on-page sends a strong message to Google.

You need to do these 2 things to rock on-page:

1. Tell Google What Your Page Is About

Google is smart: you don’t need to shove relevancy down its throat.

Going too far makes you vulnerable to Google slaps and spinning back fists.

So hit the point where Google knows your page is about your keyword…and don’t take another step.

2. Show Google Your Content is Quality

This is what trips most people up.

Next, you want to give Google the quality signals it looks for from your content.

You may think that writing a “quality” article is enough.

While that’s a good start, Google can’t necessarily tell that you’re pumping out quality content unless you give them the quality signals they look for.

SEOs that go the extra mile by including these signals are able to rank better with fewer links.

Quick Fixes:

1. Hit the basics of relevancy…but don’t push it: Just include your keywords in your title tag, description tags, the first paragraph, and a few times in your content. You can also include an image or two that include your keyword and an LSI keyword in the alt text.

2. Go the extra mile with quality signals: This means including the goodies that Google wants to see, including: Outbound links to authority domains ( .edu and .gov). From testing on my own sites, things like a list of hyperlnked references, LSI keywords and loooong content (at least 800 words per article) make a huge difference.

Read the Complete Article from backlinko.com >>>

I think it’s likely I’ll never replicate this, and I didn’t intend this either – so I’ll not preach: “this is how you get 100,000 page views.” Everyone else is just as qualified as I am to write a post that’s read all around the world, and that’s exactly what I want to happen. I’d like to tell you what I’m taking away from this, and how I’ll use it when I’m creating content for my clients in the future.

Commonly known as sharking. Google it.

1. [citation needed]…but not always.

Google only wants you to list the links that are most relevant to and most important to your content – Eric Enge likened this to a research paper around a month ago on Search Engine Watch. The difference between your content and a research paper, though, is that your content doesn’t get discredited if there is nobody to link to that backs up the point you’re trying to make.

In a Webmaster Help Video earlier in the year, Google Engineer Matt Cutts said don’t link out to low quality sites – this is pretty much the equivalent of quoting from Wikipedia in an essay. You don’t have to get peer approved before people will read your post, though, so if there’s nobody to link to that’s talking about whatever you are then that could actually be a good thing. If someone else is covering the same subject as you there’s no real reason why you should get all the links, so you should definitely write about things that no one else is covering if you can.

NB: Not having anyone to back up your point doesn’t excuse you from not having a point in the first place.

2. Content needs to solve people’s problems…or highlight them.

I had a problem with Path and as of the time I started writing the post, nobody had solved it, though a few people had tweeted about experiencing similar problems. I tweeted @path at roughly 7am and the first person to reply was someone else who was (very) actively looking for an answer to the same problem. I embedded Design33’s tweet in the post and linked to him; let my cohort know; and instantly a problem shared is a problem…erm, doubled.

Whether your content is solving someone’s problem, or you’re just empathising with them; if you know where to find them…let them know it’s there and get your influencers on board.

3. Find out what people are looking for.

The principles behind content marketing are gaining real traction in the SEO community, and more and more companies are getting on board with long-term content strategies. There’s plenty to say about planning your content out for months in advance, but as Simon points out in this fantastic YouMoz post from last year, it’s not all about Google Keyword Tool anymore. There are some great tools out there to find hot topics (Bottlenose is particularly useful), but the best way to find what your audience is looking for is by using the same tools as they are.

Wil Reynolds is a great advocate of using Google Complete to find content topics (check out Wil’s LinkLove 2013 presentation, around slide 90) – start typing questions, don’t press enter; just note down what people are actually searching for. Search Twitter and find out not only what problems need solving, but who it is that actually has that problem (see point two)! Google Keyword Tool shouldn’t be your first stop when you’re looking for fires to put out, and if it’s monthly search volume you’re looking at, chances are someone faster has created content solving the same issue weeks ago.

4. Find your forum.

…by which I don’t literally mean a forum, since as an industry we’ve pretty much ruined that for everyone – all I’m saying is that you just need to find the right soapbox to spread your message.

In the comment string on our site this guy called me out for posting this on a company blog. At the time I hadn’t really questioned where else I could actually write this up, so Luca made me think. If I had put this on my own blog nobody would have read it…I would have just been complaining without any real platform to build on (might as well have just put it on Facebook or Twitter).

One of our clients is a cloud storage company who obviously have a vested interest in online security, and do write about issues such as this from time to time. They’d never approve something like this for their blog (more in point six) so I would have had to dry it right out…or put it on another site on their behalf.

Hammering this article to fit brand guidelines would have dulled its impact so much, and for a company to write about real life issues like this they really would have had to find a real life case…otherwise they’re just tipping off the media. It would never have worked.

If you’re going to be controversial, find a site that’s fine with that to host your content – that goes for the content you’re putting out on behalf of your clients too. We’ve had plenty of content turned down by webmasters for being too much for their blogs, and you’ve got to respect that. Guest blogging is like the name implies, and you’ve got to make sure you don’t leave a mess in someone else’s house.

5. Write for your audience…

Something everyone is taught in English class from a relatively early age is how to write for an audience. Even if you came into SEO from something else – a computer science degree, MA in marketing; whatever – you still have those classes to fall back on, and they’ll give you a pretty solid foundation in content marketing. In this industry everything comes from experience – if you covered search engine optimisation in your degree I’m sure you found half the things you knew were obsolete by the time you’d graduated…and post-Penguin the other half will get you penalised too.

I found when I moved from in-house to agency side search engine marketing, most of the things I’d been doing for the last year were considered pretty spammy. If you’re writing to put content on websites that nobody reads, like article marketing websites, then you’re not writing for an audience…and that shows in the work you put out.

You don’t have to be a journalist to create great content. If you’re solving problems imagine you’ve got that problem yourself and then just write for you…

6. …don’t write for your client.

If you think you’ve found a hot topic and your client isn’t happy with being associated with it, there’s probably a case for not pushing that. Controversial content gets links, but there’s a certain amount of press that comes with those links.

I don’t have a PR agency, so TechCrunch pointing out that it was probably my fault isn’t a disaster from my point of view. If your client makes a mistake then it might be. In the case of my blog post it wasn’t long before the media-at-large didn’t care anymore (TechCrunch may have even been the start of that) and the chances are pretty good that nobody will remember a guy getting mad at his phone in a few weeks – if a tech company posted a rant about Path it would probably be called a smear campaign.

…and I won’t lie – when the VP of Marketing called me I was more than a little worried.

7. Your content has to be worthy of links to get any…

This is my very first YouMoz post, and there’s a good reason for that – up until now I’ve not really had anything to say that I think might help the community, so I’ve stuck to my blog, Twitter and getting all up in other people’s business when I get the chance.

If you’ve got an opportunity to write for a great site – or to work with a well-known journalist, or whatever – giving them a few hundred words of nothing content will a) not generate much in the way in traffic, b) not generate any leads, and c) make that great site think twice about having you back.

8. …and so does your site.

Which leads me on to number eight: the whole point of placing links as part of a content marketing strategy (or at least it probably should be the main point) is for people to click through to your site. Make sure your users are arriving on a page they want to see.

@stekenwright @phillipsnick @newsyc20 @path I think that branded3.com needs to install a WordPress caching plugin.

— David Lynch (@kemayo) April 30, 2013

When St. Louis-based developer David Lynch submitted the post to Hacker News our entire site went down almost immediately (at 17:25, which our Development team were definitely not happy about). It’s a pretty extreme example, but if your site doesn’t present people with the screen they were expecting to see they’re probably going to leave straight away.

This applies not only in a technical SEO sense (see Aleyda Solis’ wonderful resources on mobile SEO and which versions of a page you should be serving to which people for a start), but also in something as intrinsic as the services you’re providing.

Going back to point four (Find your forum): the company I work for not only has a burgeoning social team, but an entire blog dedicated to social media – the perfect place to host an article about a social network, in my opinion.

Make sure your link is pointing to the kind of page your audience wants to find.

9. Be funny, or insightful. Probably not both.

The links generated by my post contain so much more useful information and insight than my content does. Like I said, I’m not pretending to be a journalist uncovering a story. I just presented a real life experience in a humorous way…because it was pretty funny. How do you explain what you do to your partner’s grandparents? I go with “I work with computers”. Imagine trying to explain a social network to two different pairs of 80 year-olds before 6:30 in the morning? You’ve got to laugh, as the expression goes.

Your multi-national debt management firm probably can’t be funny in its content (very happy for people to prove me wrong here). Companies like this have guidelines to uphold and the chances are they’re much more interested in their brand guidelines than the links you’re working so hard to get for them. Make sure you take tone of voice into account and if your content doesn’t work in their speak, see point six. You’re writing the wrong thing.

Your post definitely needs a Wonka meme.

10. Don’t do it for the links.

Writing my blog post, I had absolutely no intention of getting a single link. In all honestly I didn’t fully expect the guys at Path to see it – I just wanted to vent and if possible, make my colleagues laugh. In a very helpful post on Quick Sprout last October KISSmetrics’ Neil Patel wrote that he never manually built a link – he just kept writing. We’re not KISSmetrics, but our blog has been covering as many of the happenings in the digital marketing world as we can possibly manage for more than half a decade – and mostly we just do it because we want to.

Posting a piece of content on your blog every few weeks or months and expecting it to get picked up isn’t going to happen; and it’s definitely not content marketing – it’s just content. No matter how good your stuff is, don’t be disheartened if you don’t get any traction with a blog post…or a hundred blog posts.

What I do think is important is that you look at every piece of content you write and think about how to make it better this time. You don’t need to over-analyse every post before it goes live – I would guess you’ve got targets and deadlines to make after all – just think about how to improve on what you’ve got so your next article will make outreach easier, or will help more people out; and if your last piece performed well, how are you going to beat it? Even if you know you won’t.

Even though Google described it as “an early concept video,” you can clearly see that local search and navigation was a key aspect of Google’s concept. The first two minutes of the 2:30 video practically center on local stuff: search, information, businesses and navigation.

And that’s smart because, since Glass is a mobile device, local search and navigation is bound to be an even more common use case than the more traditional Google Glass searches that I wrote about in part three of this series.

You should probably read that article if you haven’t already; it goes into some of the search-related limitations that Glass has, and offers a detailed look at how well Glass responds to different kinds of traditional search queries.

How does Google Glass handle local search queries and navigation? That’s the topic of today’s article, part four in my ongoing Google Glass diary series.

Local Search Queries

For the sake of this experiment, I’m going to use a few different types of local search queries. Let’s start with a “category-city” combo:

“italian restaurants richland”

Glass had no trouble understanding the query when I spoke it. After a momentary processing, Glass gave me these three local “cards” as search results:

There was no map showing multiple results with red marker pins — Glass went straight to the first result/card, and then I had the option of swiping to see the other two. (As I look at each card, I can tap to get directions and/or call the business, which I’ll discuss and show later in this article.)

Those three restaurants also show up in the same order for the same query on regular desktop searches (while signed out) as the results in Google’s local 3-pack. (Yes, Casa Mia seems to have some NAP (name, address, phone) issues that are benefitting it with two results, in this case.)

Does Glass always show the same as what’s in the local 3-pack (or 7-pack)?

It did when I searched for “guitar store,” but that’s probably because there are only two results for that query. When I changed my search to just “italian restaurants” (without the city name) and “golf courses,” Glass gave me different results than a desktop search.

I think that was because Glass thinks my location is different from my desktop computer. On the desktop, my searches tended to show results for Kennewick, Washington; on Glass, I tended to get results for Richland, Washington. I don’t live in either city, but I’m closer to Richland. When using my desktop computer, my ISP gives me an IP address that’s in a different location than what Glass knows as my location via its wifi triangulation and whatever other location-based magic is happening. (I could be wrong on that; don’t shoot the messenger.)

“dry cleaners”

A lot of local search queries are category-only; the user doesn’t bother using a city or town name. I used “dry cleaners” to see how Glass would handle a search like that. As I mentioned above, my results were all from Richland.

Meanwhile, when I did that same search on the desktop — without providing a city — the results skewed toward Kennewick.

In this case, the local search results from Glass were better because it has a better idea of where I’m located.

“starbucks”

Another common local search query involves users looking for a specific, known business or location. I tested this out on Glass by searching for “starbucks.” Just like with the above queries, Glass gave me three results and all were based in Richland.

Meanwhile, the same search while logged out on my desktop computer produced a much more complex page of information. It was led by the main Starbucks website, then showed three local results from Kennewick. It also had the local map on the right, and then the Google+ Box below that.

I should mention, too, that for searches like these that Google believes are clearly local, Glass never showed any organic results/cards in with the local cards — unlike the typical mix of organic results and local listings/packs that you see on the desktop. (There’s an interesting reverse of this for ambiguous local searches that I’ll get to in a moment.)

About Those Maps Pins

I mentioned above that, when you start the local search, Glass skips past the normal “show a map with pin markers” stage and goes directly to showing the first matching result. That’s true, but all of your search activity also gets added to the Glass “timeline” (where data shows up, such as CNN or Twitter alerts) and when you browse through the timeline, that’s where you see Glass’ version of the map-and-pins display.

The search and its results stay in the timeline like any other content, so it’s easy to go back to recent searches and get the business information, directions, etc.

Ambiguous Local Searches

Searches like “dry cleaners” and “starbucks” are, to Google, very clearly local searches. But there are countless other searches that are more ambiguous; the searcher might be wanting local information, or might not. (Local business owners and SEOs often wish Google identified these as purely local searches.)

One example, shared with me on Twitter by Patrick Smith, is for the query “ENT doctor.”

“ENT doctor”

On Glass, this search doesn’t produce any local cards/results. I get 10 results in the regular card style; some were Yelp pages listing a single (non-local) ENT doctor, but most were more generic pages about the ENT industry/profession. The first three cards on Glass were as follows:

Compare that to the same logged-out search on the desktop:

The top three results from Glass were Nos. 1, 3 and 5 on the desktop, and Glass skipped right past the two results that were actual physical, local business locations.

Interesting! And I have no explanation at all for it.

“four seasons”

One other note about ambiguous local searches: We don’t have a Four Seasons Hotel here in my little hamlet; the closest one is in Seattle, about 200 miles away.

But we do have a local business called Four Seasons Cleaners. I wondered what Glass would do if I just asked it to search for “four seasons.” Would I get the local dry cleaner? The Seattle hotel? Or some cards about the hotel chain in general?

I got the local dry cleaner.

As poorly as I think Glass did with the “ENT doctor” search, I think it did better here — this the right result given my location and the ambiguity of my query.

Google Now

Local business information is one of the primary pieces of Google Now’s contributions to the Glass experience. When I was in Philadelphia and San Francisco earlier this month, Glass was almost constantly showing me local businesses (mostly restaurants) throughout the day. In San Francisco, Google Now also showed me directions to Google HQ, where I had visited a week earlier to pick up Glass.

I don’t see many local business suggestions in Glass when I’m home, but two showed up Thursday night in the 6:00 pm hour — both were local restaurants.

The small white triangle in the upper right of the first card/result is an indicator that I could click to get another recommendation, which led to the second card.

Google Now is predictive search — an attempt to guess what I want before I ask Google. But, in this case at least, it seems to be operating exactly like the explicit local searches above. Those two restaurants rank No. 1 and 2, in order, in Google’s local search results if I search for “restaurants [my hometown].”

Note, too, that those cards/results include Zagat scores at the bottom; an odd thing to include considering that Google just started killing off the 30-point Zagat scale and going back to the standard 5-star ratings. These Google Now cards are the only place I’ve seen Zagat scores in Glass; if I do that restaurants search outside of Google Now, I’ll get the same cards/results, but without the Zagat scores. I suspect those will be replaced by the 5-star system in a future software update.

Navigation Directions

Lastly, let’s look at what Glass offers to help users get to local businesses and places.

When looking at a local business card/result, you can tap for two options: call the business or get directions. These are the screens for those two commands:

If you choose “Call,” that’s what Glass does. If you tap the “Get Directions” card, Glass launches its navigation system. As I was walking through Philly and San Francisco, this was really good, mainly because Glass follows the turns of your head as you look in different directions. It was quick to respond to each change of direction I made or each glance down a side street.

When I was at Google to pick up Glass, I used it to get directions from there to San Jose Airport. When you enter the navigation system, you can choose driving, walking or bicycling directions. (Public transit isn’t available yet.) And as you navigate, you can either see turn-by-turn directions or get a broader overhead look at the travel route, as shown below.

The directions and navigation works very smoothly from what I’ve experienced, and they’re one of the strongest features that Glass offers at the moment.

Final Thoughts

It’s likely that the local search experience on Glass will get better over time, and it’s possible that those improvements will also involve changes to what I’m seeing now when I do local searches.

But at the moment, there are few takeaways I can think of that are based on what the local search experience is like right now on Glass:

• local search visibility on Glass is all about being the first business listed in the 3-pack or 7-pack
• location targeting is better on Glass than the desktop, at least for me
• local businesses are well-served to have a complete business profile in Google+ Local/Google Places; some of the cards above show business hours and all offer quick access to placing a phone call or getting directions
• if Google isn’t certain that queries for your industry have local intent, you’re out of luck on Glass

The next article in this series is likely to be a look at how Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all work on Glass. For that, you’ll want to keep an eye on our sister site, Marketing Land. If you’ve missed any previous Google Glass diary articles, see the links below.

Related Entries:

• Google Glass Diary, Day 1: Getting Started With Google Glass
• Google Glass Diary, Part 2: Positive Public Reactions The Importance Of Google I/O This Week
• Google Glass Diary, Part 3: How Search Works On Google Glass

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Features: Analysis | Google | Google: Maps Local | Google: Project Glass Eyeglasses | Search Features: Natural Language | Top News

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt’s disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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If we wish to see what a Apple TV will demeanour like, we wish we were tuned to Spike during about 1 p.m. Eastern today, since we got a flattering plain design of a rumored device: a absolute all-in-one party heart with a hands-free interface that smartly integrates live TV with a resources of streaming and downloadable media.

I’m speaking, of course, of a Xbox One, Microsoft’s freshly unveiled new diversion console. Except it’s so most some-more than a diversion console. The Xbox One is dictated to be a authority core for any and all media we knowledge by a TV screen. Sure, a Xbox 360 already had that job, yet a One is a substantial upgrade.

First of all, Microsoft uses a talent interface: your voice. While voice commands on mobile inclination (exemplified by Siri) are mostly inapt for many situations, they make a lot some-more clarity when you’re sitting on a cot in a remoteness of your home.

Cracking a Interface

Microsoft debuted voice control on a initial Kinect, yet now it’s bundled a Kinect with a console and softened and stretched a abilities. During Tuesday’s large reveal, Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi told a Xbox One to “Watch TV,” “Game” and “Go to Music.” The appurtenance responded as quick as a human, and in a intelligent demeanour — when Mehdi pronounced “Watch ESPN,” it obeyed yet Mehdi ever wanting to know a channel number.

Then there were a gestures, that Microsoft has also stretched in a Xbox One. Miming a “grab a screen” movement, Mehdi was means to immediately go behind to a Xbox home screen. Reverse a movement, and a calm goes behind to full-screen. Nice.

Yes, it was a canned demo, and we should know a small softened how good a Xbox One unequivocally works after Mashable editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff has some hands-on time. However, a guarantee is great, quite a clearly seamless formation of live TV. An interface this discerning and quick borders on — brave we contend it? — magic.

After saying a how a Xbox One will work, it creates me consternation what Apple has left to do. Before he died, Steve Jobs famously pronounced that he had finally “cracked” a interface for a connected television. But that was dual years ago. Technology has progressed considerably, and Microsoft is now branch a living-room beachhead into full-on invasion.

Xbox Won?

Of course, it stays to be seen how good a live TV formation is. Mehdi showed how it would work with his Comcast feed, yet Comcast has a understanding with Microsoft on a Xbox. With other providers, a knowledge competence not be as seamless. Voice control is also a really fussy technology, with other attempts to confederate it with TVs falling flat.

From a Xbox One reveal, though, Microsoft appears to have a large lead on anyone else in those areas, and a height that’s already in millions of people’s homes. If Apple is going to remonstrate business it has a softened experience, it’s going to have to broach an interface that’s even easier to use, formation with softened services and some-more calm that people want.

Factor in a Xbox One’s support for Blu-ray, 4K and 3D as good as all a calm already on a platform, and a rug is even some-more built in Microsoft’s favor. Then there’s a really intelligent Skype integration, a use whose platform-agnostic inlet gives it a large leg-up on Apple’s FaceTime.

If there’s one thing holding behind a Xbox from holding over everyone’s vital room, it’s influence opposite gaming consoles, and Microsoft didn’t do itself any favors by broadcasting a phenomenon on a scandalous Spike TV. Just mins before a Xbox broadcast, a channel showed a module depicting a full-on (though not entirely graphic) masturbation sequence. Not accurately a best lead-in for a device if it wants to go mainstream.

Despite a facepalm moment, a Xbox is doing only that (more people now buy it or ubiquitous party than games). With a Xbox One, Microsoft has a products to offer something new and softened to anyone who is meddlesome in digital media — even if they never glow adult even one game.

Yes, a Apple iTV is substantially real, it’s substantially entrance in a subsequent year, and it’ll substantially shortly be in many homes. And right underneath it you’ll substantially find an Xbox One.

Jim Edwards / BI

I recently switched from regulating a Windows PC and Android phones to all-Apple products, all a time.

My new iPhone 5 and MacBook Pro are unequivocally really cool.

But when we was a PC/Android user (with an Acer laptop and phones by HTC and Samsung), Apple fans gave me a sense that angels sang each time they non-stop a MacBook, and that I’d never wish to go behind to a intolerably uncool star outward a iPhone.

Instead, we was astounded to learn that some tools of a Apple star are a few stairs behind a pace. Using Apple gadgets indeed done my life harder, in some ways.

The site includes sections that cover terminology, network protection methods, an overview of where ads on the Yahoo! Bing network will appear, as well as best practice resources for advertisers and publishers.

Google has a similar service, the Ad Traffic Quality Resource, that launched in 2007.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Top News

About The Author: Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting. Beyond Search Engine Land, Ginny provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin. See more articles by Ginny Marvin

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Helios Bars exaggerate an integrated headlight and dual behind LEDs, and riders can use a left and right lights as spin signals. But what sets a product detached is a ability to bond handlebars to a smartphone around Bluetooth 4.0.

Using smartphone connectivity yet Helios’ iOS app, a behind lights on a handlebars take advantage of a GPS tie — so they can assistance we navigate around Google Maps’ API. After inputting a end into Helios’ app, your phone plots a route. Then, once we start biking, a behind left and right lights blink, indicating where to turn.

The behind lights also change tone formed on your speed. “[When] we start out, you’re going slow: it’s red. As we start speeding up, it fades to yellow. And as we start going fast, it fades to green,” pronounced cofounder Seena Zandipour. In further to a visible speedometer, Helios Bars let users customize colors of a behind LEDs.

“It’s giving we some-more than usually lighting,” Zandipour told Mashable. “It’s indeed providing information to we and other people on a highway such as cars. And this is improving your roving knowledge as a supplement since we have all these cold effects, though it also is gripping we safer on a road.”

SEE ALSO: Revolights Illuminate Your Bike With Built-In LEDs

The handlebars also underline vicinity lighting — a headlight turns on or off depending on how tighten we are to a bike — and a low-power GPS procedure that serves as a bike tracker. Pay-as-you-go SIM label users can send their bikes SMS content messages and, in turn, accept a couple with their bike’s location.

The handlebars are powered by dual rechargeable batteries, and can usually be commissioned regulating special screws with a supposing tool.

Helios launched a Kickstarter debate Tuesday to lift $70,000. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had already lifted some-more than $17,000.

Kickstarter backers can sequence Helios Bars in dropbar and bullhorn styles in possibly black or white for an early-bird oath of $150 (limited quantity) or $199. Custom colors can be systematic for $249.

From Collegiate Roots to HAXLR8R

Zandipour, along with co-founders Kenneth Gibbs and Antonio Belmontes, initial met as freshmen roommates during a University of California, Merced. There, Zandipour said, a contingent detected they had opposite skills that complemented one another. They kicked around lots of opposite ideas for businesses, and finally, right before graduation, a thought for Helios was born.

This year, a Helios group was housed in hardware startup accelerator HAXLR8R, located in Shenzhen, China, right subsequent to a city’s wiring heart of member sellers and manufacturers. “Shenzhen unequivocally done it easy to iterate fast with prototypes and figure out what works and what doesn’t,” Zandipour said. “And then, by a time we get behind from lunch, we have maybe one or dual some-more facilities already grown that we didn’t have in a morning.”

HAXLR8R provides hardware entrepreneurs with seed funding, bureau space and mentoring. Other new HAXLR8R-accelerated startups embody Spark Devices, which grown an Arduino-compatible house to supplement Wi-Fi to most any project; Fabule, which combined a brainy LED flare with a personality; and LightUp, which combined building blocks to learn wiring to kids and teens.

SEE ALSO: 3 Best Social Good Startup Accelerators You’ve Never Heard Of

Speed is something same to software, though generally not to hardware development, Zandipour continued. “If you’re vital in a United States and carrying to sequence microchips to be shipped to we and perplexing to email factories, like unequivocally specific requests — it’s usually being in there (Shenzhen) and being means to accommodate with people and…factories: display them accurately what we mean, rather than promulgation like 100 attachments in an email — it’s unequivocally beneficial.”

Cyclists: Would we use Helios Bars? What gadgets do we use on your bike? Let us know in a comments.

Thumbnail and lead picture by Mashable/Vignesh Ramachandran. Secondary images pleasantness of Helios.

With Vine, you have six seconds to really impress a viewer. Thankfully, six seconds is more than enough time to dazzle someone, tell a story or share a laugh. These tips range from technical best practices to creative guidelines.

1. Visualize the Final Product

Before you start your masterpiece, have a good idea what your finished Vine is going to look like. This might seem like obvious advice, but it will help make your shoot more efficient and give you an opportunity to really think about the structure of your creation. Some Viners sketch out their Vine frame-by-frame in a notebook, while others just have an idea in their head. Find what works for you.

This isn’t to say you can’t change things as you go or get inspired while shooting; however, a simple road map will help. If you can visualize it, there is a good chance you can find some way to bring it to life.

When Vine first launched, paper and food immediately began showing up in the most popular Vines. Why? Because both paper and food are accessible, cheap and easy to manipulate. Top make something come to life with simple stop-motion, simply move the scene very minimally and take a very short shot by tapping your screen. Look around you — is there anything you can use for a Vine? (Answer: Yes, there is!)

2. Find Your Own Unique Visual Style

The Viners who most stand out are the ones who created a visual style for themselves and really owned it. Think about the things you love the most. How would you describe your own personality? How could those things be translated to Vine? This doesn’t mean you can’t share things outside of your style, but if you have a strong Vine personality, people will start to really anticipate your work. If you love being outdoors, let Vine be an extension of that. If you’re really into comedy, Vine is a perfect platform for comedy.

SEE ALSO: Meet Vine’s Most Creative Stop-Motion Animator

Here are a few Viners who really nailed a consistent personal style:

Pinot is an illustrator and graphic designer. His Vines often show animations that defy reality and interact with the physical world. He uses his sketchbook and cel animation to make objects come to life.

Meagan Cignoli: Meagan is a fashion and portrait photographer who always fills her Vines with life. Many of her Vines have a nice brightly lit look to them and focus on fashion. She’s also been hired to create Vines for brands — including these DIY tips for Lowes.

YellDesign: Viner Matt Wills immediately got noticed when his toast Vine was selected as one of the first editor’s choices. He continued with the magic food theme and has created many more popular Vines in a similar style.

3. Set Your Brain to “Vine Mode”

This might sound silly, but make Vine a part of your thought process during the day. When you see something that would make a good Vine, you’ll immediately recognize it. If you look at the world through a lens of “How can this be captured in a Vine?” you’re guaranteed to find something interesting to share.

4. Use Your Six Seconds Wisely

A really well-executed Vine won’t feel rushed. Even though a Vine is only six seconds long, you shouldn’t be stressed out by its length. If you’re setting out to tell a joke, you will be able to set up and execute your gag in a short amount of time. Just as you couldn’t tell a 2,000 word story in a single tweet, you wouldn’t tell a story that needs three minutes to develop on Vine.

Don’t try to cram too many thing into your Vine, and don’t force things that don’t work.

5. Stabilize Your Shot

Shaky video can be really distracting and annoying; you’re going to want a tripod. When you buy a tripod, keep some things in mind.

• Make sure the tripod or phone mount will support vertical video. Many of the tripod mounts are geared for horizontal video.
• Get two tripods: one that is rock steady, another that is flexible. (like a GorillaPod) You can use both of them for different purposes.
• Make sure your tripod is steady. If you are doing stop-motion, you will be tapping your phone hundreds of times and you need a support that won’t wobble.
• If you want to really go all out, try out an iPhone dolly (such as the iStabilizer) and attach your vertical-supporting mount

 Image courtesy iStabilizer

6. Nail the Coveted Perfect Loop

One hashtag always popular on Vine is #loop. Basically, a Vine with a perfect loop will seamlessly repeat forever. Ideally, you’ll want to hook a viewer with a looping video so they will watch your creation multiple times. To achieve a perfect loop, your final frame needs to flow effortlessly with your first frame.

Some things to keep in mind when planning your loop: What objects are moving in my Vine? Will they end up exactly where they began? If the frame starts blank (such as the banana in @origiful‘s banana Vine above), your subject will simply need to leave enough time for your subject to enter and exit the frame. (Of course, there are other ways to achieve a loop — and not all Vines need one.)

7. Determine Whether You’ll Move the Camera

While rock steady shots often work well with stop-motion videos, movement can add something extra to your videos. Actor/Vine-embracer Adam Goldberg likes to give his Vines a sense of motion. The camera movements — along with his fisheye lens — complement his surrealist style. (Just be careful not to make your shots too shaky and make your viewers queasy.)

8. Be Aware of Technical Limitations

White Balance: The white balance on Vine is not your friend. Your phone will auto-white balance, but it doesn’t do a good job of compensating for different colors of light. If you’re outdoors, great; your light will probably be fine. However, if you’re indoors, be aware of the color of your light source.

For example, at Mashable HQ, we have bold blue walls. While they look really cool, they can really throw off the white balance of vines. When we shot our Valentine’s Day Vine, the blue of the wall caught the camera’s auto-white balance — despite the white tabletop — and gave the entire Vine a red tint.

If you put a white sheet of paper in front of your phone to white balance, the colors will be corrected for a moment before readjusting to the improper white balance as soon as you remove the paper.

Don’t expect to be able to fix your white balance in a bad location. Find somewhere bright, full of natural light and away from colored walls. (That is, unless you want to play with a tweaked white balance for a fun effect.)

Focus: Vine will also auto-focus your shot. This is unfortunate because the camera won’t always focus on the subject you want it to. If you put your finger where you want the camera to focus, it will generally refocus the shot accordingly. Sometimes the focus will hold; sometimes it won’t. If your subject isn’t catching the camera’s focus, rethink the way your shot is set up.

You can take advantage of Vine’s focus quirk. Quickly change the focus or light in a shot for some frames of lens adjustment and exposure.

Audio: While your phone should pick up your voice pretty nicely in most situations, Vine is very limited when it comes to audio. If you’re recording a stop motion video, there really isn’t any way to give it an uninterrupted soundtrack. If you play a song while you shoot, you’ll end up with a disjointed audio effect.

You can try making individual sound effects (either with an audio device or your own voice) to accompany the action in your vine. However, many popular animation-based vines focus solely on visuals and don’t use audio at all.

Crashing: If you’ve shot many Vines, you likely have experienced some technical difficulties. There are few things more frustrating than losing a nearly completed video you’ve been working on for an hour. If you’re going to shoot a time-intensive Vine, close out other apps on your phone, turn on your Wi-Fi and go into Airplane Mode so you aren’t interrupted by a phone call.

Tapping and Swiping: Obviously, if you are making a stop-motion Vine, you want to take as short of shots as possible. Practice with your phone and tripod to get better at this process. If you have one frame that is significantly longer than the rest, it will be noticeable. If you want to free up your hands to perform, you can swipe across from left-to-right on the bottom of the screen to have Vine record all six seconds at once.

9. Learn Video Basics

It’s good to keep the basic rules of video in mind; however, sometimes breaking the rules will give your Vine a really cool effect.

• Rule of Thirds: When framing a shot, one of the first things that should come to mind is framing. Where is the subject going to be? Will it have enough space to move in the frame?It’s important to keep in mind that Vine videos are square — framing will be a different than a 16:9 shot. Putting someone on the right or left third might not give you enough space, though keeping your subject’s eyes on the upper third of the shot will probably work. In general, a centered shot works well.

  

• Lighting: Be mindful of the way light is hitting your subject. If it’s a really sunny afternoon, you’ll probably want to find some shade or shoot indoors. If your subject is strongly lit from behind, it will either be really dark or have a blown-out background. If you’re indoors, grab a lamp and position it to light your subject.

10. Take Advantage of Vine’s Quirks

Vine is filled with all kinds of quirky things — such as @RyanWMcHenry‘s “Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal” series. Vine is the perfect medium for a quick visual joke like this. You don’t need more than a few seconds to get the point across.

Some people are frustrated that you can’t save your unfinished videos, but instead of being annoyed, use it as an opportunity to share things in real time. If you see something, shoot it. If it doesn’t work, you don’t have to post it. You never know who will find your little creation amusing.

If you want to make your teacup collection come to life, or make funny faces at the camera, Vine is the place.

11. Put Thought Into Sharing Your Vine

Timing: Be mindful of the timing of your Vine. Not everyone can crank out Vines during the work day, so if you can create one during the day, it might have an extra advantage standing out. We’ve noticed the Vines really start to roll in when people get off work for the day. If you start your morning with a Vine, it could be one of the few fresh videos in the feed that morning. (Of course, keep in mind there are Viners in many different time zones.)

Hashtags: Before you begin shooting, take a look at the trending hashtags in the “Explore” tab. Don’t just throw random hashtags on your vine, that will look sloppy. (This isn’t Instagram, and you aren’t Rihanna.) Find the one or two most fitting hashtags for your creation and hashtag accordingly. This is how people will find your work. There are a few hashtags that will always be popular, such as #magic, #loop, #howto and #cute.

12. Follow Other Viners for Inspiration

SEE ALSO: 10 Best Users to Follow on Vine

A very creative community has developed on Vine. Take the time to follow interesting people to fuel your creativity. If you’re into comedy, check out our list of great comedians to follow on Vine. If animation is your thing, follow the people we’ve highlighted above or in this post. However, we encourage you to explore Vine and find people who haven’t been in the spotlight yet.

Who do you enjoy following on Vine? What other tips would you add? Share your favorite Viners and best Vine tips with us in the comments below. Also, be sure to put your skills to good use in our upcoming Vine challenge. The first challenge will be announced on May 23.

Homepage Image by origiful

Maptia

The whole Maptia organisation in Morocco

The disproportion between a pursuit we adore and a pursuit we hatred is customarily one thing: a company’s culture.

These days, lots of tech startups have adopted informative perks like giveaway food, pool table/games, and beers on tap.

But others have come adult with new ways to make their companies good places to work. They’ve “hacked” their culture, according to this contention thread on Quora.

Mobile devices are impacting URL sharing

First and foremost among these factors is the “device effect.” The device effect means that a huge number of us are now consuming our content on a mobile device that fits in our hands, such as a smartphone or tablet.

A decade ago, if you wanted to go online, you generally had to do it on your laptop or desktop computer. Not today. The transition to a more mobile Internet has had a profound effect not only on the was people consume content, but also on the way people share and distribute it.

Not long ago, if you wanted to post or share a link with others, you had to know a bit of HTML, and you had to type the full URL out. The big shortcut back then was copy/paste.

The link graph of the mid- to late 90s had very little link spam compared to today, simply because it was too much of a hassle to actually create links. The idea of a link removal service in 1998 would have been laughable. (Actually, it’s just as laughable today — but that’s another story for another day.)

However, HTML editors evolved (early versions of Netscape had a “Composer” feature), FTP became popular and bingo – we were collaborating and creating webpages and link guides and felt like actual publishers.  (Anyone remember ZEAL?)

Blogs came next, and third-party services like AddThis and ShareThis made it simple for webmasters to encourage the sharing of website content. Such features allowed readers to share links with ease. This was all pre-mobile, and the exploding link graph of those days was a large part of why Google dominates the search landscape now – -they realized early on what all those links meant.

Now that mobile devices dominate our daily lives, true link authorship — meaning typing URLs out on a keyboard or copy/pasting them into an HTML document or blog post — has changed dramatically. There are statistics that describe the shocking migration to mobile devices by content consumers — one stat that amazes me is that mobile traffic in 2012 was 12 times as large as was all traffic on the Internet  in 2000!

Think about that for a moment. If someone had told you in 2000 that, by 2012, there would be 12 times more Internet content read or watched on phones (or things called “tablets”) than is currently consumed in total, you would not have believed it. In 2000, my cell phone didn’t have a screen at all — and it was still painful to watch online video on a desktop, even if you had a cable modem.

While I do not have hard statistics on the effect the migration to mobile devices has had on people’s ability to type in, post, and share URLs, I imagine it has to be profound. After all, how many links today originate via Facebook or Twitter sharing buttons that are embedded within content?

Add to the mix LinkedIn, Pinterest, and a few others that have managed to reach a relatively decent mass of button installs, and what we now have is a scenario where more URLs migrate from person to person via mobile device button sharing than by people actually opening up a laptop and posting a URL via a keyboard.

Even my own habits bear this out. On the weekends, I consume my email, Web content, etc., exclusively through my iPad and iPhone. I don’t go near my laptop. I used to bring my laptop in from the office to the house on weekends. I don’t have to do that anymore. I use an iPad almost exclusively when in the house, and iPhone when on the road.

How does this affect my link creation habits? Dramatically. I simply don’t “create” links anymore when I’m on those devices. I might share a link via the “Email a link to this page” option provided by the mobile Safari browser or click a “Tweet this” button via a mobile interface, but what I’m not doing is the bread and butter of the link builder’s daily activity: sitting at a desk, working on a large machine, entering link data into submission forms, inserting links into content via HTML code, emailing link requests, etc.

My actual link building work takes place with me sitting at a desk the same way as I did in 1994, and that is not likely to change for a long time. I honestly do not have any recollection of a time when I have performed the work of link building via my iPad, unless you count the sending of an email. And even that’s not an easy thing to do, as a properly crafted email link request is going to have to include elements that are not mobile device-friendly.

Try writing a blog post via a mobile interface and including a long URL to a cool page or video you found — it’s torture.  It would take less time to simply drive to your office, fire up the PC and write it that way. And, if you’re a link curator — meaning you seek out, evaluate and share topical links in clumps — you aren’t authoring your posts on a tablet. You have a mouse in hand and a 24-inch monitor in front of you. Friction is the enemy of link sharing.

Those of you who actually perform link building activities at the keyboard level likely understand what I’m talking about here. Heavy duty link building activities for clients still must take place predominantly on a machine that is not a tablet or phone.

Ease Of Sharing Means Ease Of Sharing Junk

With fewer people typing URLs and more people tapping “Tweet” and “Like” buttons, this means a great thinning of the link-creating herd must be taking place. As much as I love the social migration of URLs, there is simply no way you are going to convince me that URLs shared in this manner have the same signal salience as URLs shared by a curator on a keyboard.

Think about it this way: I have a librarian friend who is responsible for the library’s monthly “Best of the Web” feature. When he authors this feature, he’s on a computer with Safari open to a multitude of tabs. There’s no way he could author that column on a mobile device. He might come across a site or two on his tablet while doing research during the month, but when it’s time to actually produce the content of his newsletter, it’s back to the good old-fashioned keyboard and mouse.

This raises some interesting questions. Are links that require more time and effort to insert into content more credible than links shared by a one-second button tap on an iPhone? Put another way, does the ease of URL sharing on mobile devices reduce the credibility of those URLs shared because the share takes place via a button tap and thus may have been impulsive rather than carefully considered?

Is sharing URLs via mobile like playing Whack-A-Mole? Are these impulsive URL shares a bad thing? When examined in mass, does the method of sharing help surface the best the Web has to offer? If I’m in my car at a red light, and I read a headline and tap the “Tweet” button, have I just created a useful signal?

Ultimately, it seems to me that the URL share will be valued based on the sharer (hence why Google is pushing authorship and cross-device log-ins). Search engines must be able to take the billions of URLs ping-ponging across the Web and decide to what extent this noise contains useful signals. Links are not what is trusted — it’s the credibility of the person doing the sharing that’s trusted.

Beyond the mobile explosion, the main point or thesis I don’t want to stray too far from is that I believe we have entered a period where the manner and method in which we share URLs has changed forever; thus, the ability of search engines to determine intent and credibility based on manner, method, device and friction of the sharing process will be crucial to producing useful search results.

After all, which is likely to have more value: a share originating from an iPhone, or a share originating from a PC with a Library of Congress IP address?

In light of the explosion of links due to ease of sharing, I expect the value of the traditional curator/linker like my librarian friend to increase. These passionate subject specialists will become even more important to the search engines looking for intent and meaning.

Why? Take a look at a curated page of links, such as this page or this one. Someone had to make decisions about what to include on these pages — what to link to, how to link to it, and what to say about the sites being linked to. Time an effort were put into collecting and sharing these links — it was not done on mobile device with a one-second finger tap.

With Diversity Comes Strategic Opportunity

With so many ways to share and encounter URLs, it’s a very cool time to be a content publicist or link builder. There are more opportunities for URLs to be shared, discovered and surfaced. And good link marketers know how to get people to websites without Google — non-search traffic diversification has never been easier than it is right now if you’re willing to change your mindset and think like a publicist or traditional marketer.

What we perhaps didn’t see coming, however, was the possibility that the method used for sharing content could end up being a signal in and of itself. How will you adjust your strategy?

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building | Link Week

Since then, what Twitter means to people has evolved. People go to the platform to consume news, share life updates, find like-minded followers and, yes, post a photo of a good sandwich on occasion (though Instagram now provides a better home for #foodporn).

And over the past six years, Mashable has evolved. Today we are a global media company that reaches 25 million people around the world each month. Our social community continues to grow on Twitter and beyond. To give you a sense of how engaged you all are, one Mashable link is shared on a social network every second!

When I go to conferences, a lot of people tell me that they read my tweets. And while I’m thrilled that people follow the account, and flattered that people think that I’m so prolific, I can no longer take credit. We have a talented Community team that has built our social strategy and engages our community across all of our social channels.

In fact, we have many talented teams: Editorial, Product, Marketing, Advertising, Human Resources, Business Development and Events, who are the hearts and minds of our mission.

We are all working to build a media company that not only provides the latest news, but also gives readers the information and inspiration they need to change the world. Sometimes this means breaking news on technology companies; sharing the latest from the entertainment world; detailing how to plan a wedding on a budget; or providing analysis on how digital is transforming politics. And of course, there are viral videos, spoofs and cats, because at the end of the day, we all know the Internet was invented for cats!

Our readers have grown and evolved, they’ve taken on new career challenges, they’ve celebrated milestones and they are the constant voices pushing us through the digital revolution.

Our job is to be at the epicenter. This means we must evolve constantly.

As Mashable grows and evolves — we introduced a new site design a few months ago — it’s time to change our social media look.

Today, all of us at Mashable are excited to introduce a new look for our social feeds, including Twitter. I personally think it’s an upgrade!

We hope you’ll find it to be a welcome and bright addition to your feed. The design complements our site and pushes our brand forward as we grow.

Now, just because you won’t see my face every day in your feed, doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere. You can always follow me on my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Image by Mashable

From Search Engine Land:

• Where Have All The Linkers Gone?
  A unique combination of factors is having a profound effect on the “link graph” being created today, with many implications for those of us in the content publicity/link building field. First and foremost among these factors is the “device effect.” The device effect means that a huge number of us are now consuming our content [...]
• Bing Ads Launches Traffic Quality Center
  Microsoft announced the launch of The Bing Ads Traffic Quality Resource Center today, a website designed to give advertisers and publishers visibility into the traffic quality protection systems of the Yahoo! Bing Network. The site includes sections that cover terminology, network protection methods, an overview of where ads on the Yahoo! Bing network will appear, [...]
• Hollywood Asks Google To Stop Listing Piracy Documentary, Claiming It’s Piracy Too
  The recently released TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay – Away from Keyboard, a documentary that sympathizes with the founders of the infamous file sharing website The Pirate Bay, has become the target of fraudulent link takedown requests from major Hollywood Studios, including Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate. After its February release on The Pirate Bay [...]
• New AdWords Editor Update For Enhanced Campaigns
  Google rolled out a new version of AdWords Editor today. The latest version features more ways to make bulk changes to enhanced campaigns. New capabilities include: Bid adjustments for placements, topics, and audiences Mobile bid adjustments at the ad group level Upgrade campaigns in bulk using CSV import or the Add/update multiple campaigns tool Enter [...]
• Google’s Data Highlighter Now Supports Movies, TV, Articles, Products, Local Biz Apps
  Google has quietly added support for six additional data types to the data highlighter rich snippet markup tool they introduced back in December. Google initially launched a visual rich snippet markup tool in December to allow less tech-savvy webmasters to markup their event based data. The tool only worked with event data and nothing else. [...]
• Graph Search Turns White, Looks More Like A Traditional Search Box
  This morning many hardcore Facebook users will be surprised when they login and look towards the iconic top blue bar. The coloring of Graph Search has been inverted and now features a bright white centered search box in the midst of the top bar. Searches still act the same and provide the same results, the coloring has [...]
• Social Signals Are So Last Week – Use Infographics to Drive Real Leads
  There is a lot of talk these days about social signals affecting Google Search Results, and many SEOs are feeling the effects for their clients, who are disconnected from the social world. When it comes to infographics, you may find yourself scratching your head at the many conflicting claims out there from the marketers that [...]

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Search News From Around The Web:

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Paid Search

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Searching

• Advanced Search Operators: SEO Experts’ Web Searching Tips, www.boom-online.co.uk

SEM Industry

• Cognitive Linearity, www.ppcassociates.com

SEO SEM

• Google Crushes Home Decor Center’s Trademark Challenge to AdWords, Eric Goldman
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• Why Google treats brands differently, SEOish
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Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt’s disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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You could tap away like a maniac at small strings, but eventually you’d learn the strategy of creating longer ones, which scored more. The important thing was that the game kept your average score, which you were constantly trying to improve.

Bubblet was, I discovered, viral. Scary viral. I would show it to friends, and all they would want to do was play it over and over. My editor at Time magazine cursed me for introducing him to it at a conference; all he could think about was playing it on the plane home. I even got my mother hooked.

From Bubbles to Dots

Fast forward to 2013, and a Bubblet-like game is suddenly taking the iPhone ecosystem by storm. In case you haven’t been exposed to it yet, it’s called Dots. It’s insanely simple. You have 60 seconds to connect as many same-colored dots as possible. Released 20 days ago with little fanfare, it has since been downloaded more than 2 million times.

More than 100 million games have been played so far, according to Betaworks, the company that developed Dots. That works out to about 3,500 games per minute — 3,500 chances every minute that someone will look over the shoulder of a Dots player and ask: what’s that?

What we’ve got here is a fast-moving virus, potentially fatal to productivity. This weekend alone, I saw another dozen friends hit by the contagion. It always spread via the look over the shoulder.

“Thanks a lot,” wrote comedian Baratunde Thurston in the app’s most recent iTunes review. “You’ve ruined my productivity with a game I didn’t know I needed.” Baratunde may be the most high-profile victim so far. His high score, by the way, is a pretty impressive 446 (the game’s all-time high score appears to be 722). I know this because Dots tells you the high scores of all your Twitter and Facebook connections.

So this all starts to tell us a lot about why Dots is a hit, and why it’s possibly the smartest move Betaworks ever made. (We wrote about the strangeness of Betaworks, an online media company, releasing an iOS game here; the developer, Patrick Moberg, told us he was playing around with a new design for displaying stories, and “sort of forgot the words.”)

But let’s break it down into its elements. What turns a normally sensible iPhone user into a Dots zombie?

1) Aesthetics. If Google were to suddenly focus all its engineering efforts into an accessible mobile game, it might end up looking a lot like Dots. The design is extremely clean, and the brief opening explanation could not be more simple. It’s colorful. The dots bounce down when the bottom row disappears in a very satisfying manner.

Controlling Dots for 60 seconds is like taking a refreshing bath in abstract eye candy — for you, and for the friend watching over your shoulder.

2) It’s a microgame. You play a round in 60 seconds. Each round is another shot at glory (a new high score, or at least upping your leaderboard totals). What spare 60 seconds of your day will you not risk for glory in an eye-candy bathtub?

And yet, being a microgame means you can control the habit. (Or at least, you can keep telling yourself it’s under control.) It’s the perfect thing to play in line at the post office, on a plane, waiting for a bus or during the boring parts of a meeting. We know, you would never do that last one.

3) It’s social, but not too social. We really don’t need to be playing at the same time as each other to have a fun mobile experience; that’s what the success of Words With Friends and its ilk have shown.

Dots is really one giant Facebook and Twitter-connected leaderboard. Advancing up that leaderboard means bragging rights among your friends and family. I am now obsessed with beating the three or four Facebook contacts ahead of me. A good friend and I have been exchanging screenshots of high scores, an extra level of smackdown I can highly recommend.

4) Points mean prizes. Every 60-second game is also earning you Dots, which can be redeemed for…

5) Level-Ups. There are currently three dot-popping powers you can buy. Very soon, I have no doubt, there will be more.

6) There’s more to it. Play Dots for any length of time and you’ll realize: it’s not really about connecting lines, it’s about making squares. This excellent strategy guide explains all.

7) Caution: may help you relax. Your mileage may vary on this one, but Moberg says his aim was to create a game that “reduces stress” during and (more importantly) after play. He may be on to something. A game of Dots — if you can keep it to one game — turns out to be a great way to quickly reset the brain after stressful situations. (Though more study is certainly needed.)

The game will upgrade fast. “There’s still a lot for us to do,” co-founder Paul Murphy tells Mashable. He and Moberg say they have a solid product roadmap, with plenty of features they left out of the original.

Whether that means Dots will suffer feature creep remains to be seen. Personally, I hope they add just one thing: an average score. This is the one thing that made Bubblet so addictive all those years ago.

Then again, that could turn this scary little game from a virus into a full-blown epidemic.

Appcelerator

Appcelerator CEO Jeff Haynie

See Also

How Location-Based Services Are Transforming The Mobile Industry

Why Cross-Screen Marketing Is Set To Explode

The Tracking Solutions That Could Lead An Explosion In Mobile Marketing

Appcelerator, that creates a renouned giveaway mobile app growth height called Titanium, is now environment a steer on enterprises that build their possess mobile apps for workers.

On Tuesday, Appcelerator launched a new mobile growth height for enterprises, that it’s offered as a use over a web. Unlike Titanium, that is usually for apps, a craving height includes support, training and use turn agreements.

It also includes analytics tech that tests apps while they’re being built, to make certain they’re behaving good and no glitches make it into a final product.

Once apps are finished, Appcelerator hosts them and marks use and other stats. Appcelerator can uncover how many people are regulating an app during a sold moment. This tech comes from Appcelerator’s merger final Nov of Nodeable, a large information analytics startup.

Appcelerator’s height satisfies craving offered teams that wish to see how their apps are being used, and IT teams, whose pursuit it is to make certain they’re behaving adult to snuff, Appcelerator CEO Jeff Haynie told us.

“Mobile mostly ends adult being a primary, and infrequently only, interface that a business’s partners and employees user to correlate with a company,” Haynie said.

Appcelerator is offered a craving height on a per-seat basement and also charging formed on where it’s hosted. There’s a Starter book for about $5,000 per user per year, that has all though opening and contrast analytics and is accessed on a web.

The full craving height starts during around $12,000 per user per year when using in a “public cloud”, that means they’re pity a hardware with other customers.

Appcelerator is also offered a “virtual open cloud”—where business get their possess hardware— for about $32,000 per user per year.

All 3 options need a one-year contract.

Appcelerator has 450,000 developers and a apps run on 135 million mobile devices, or some-more than 10% of a world’s mobile devices. It is VC saved and has lifted around $50 million so far.

Rumors swirled in Feb that Microsoft was going to acquire Appcelerator, though those never panned out. Haynie declined comment, observant “we are focused on building a good association right now and consider there are outrageous opportunities in a marketplace in front of us.”

Users will need to log in to their AdWords accounts to access Keyword Planner. The external version of Keyword Tool that non-AdWords users, including SEOs, could access for general keyword research will also be disappearing. The new tool is designed to make it easier for advertisers to create new campaigns and ad groups from within the planner.

To learn more about the ins and outs of the tool, Larry Kim did a thorough review of the Keyword Planner in his post, How to Use The Keyword Planner — The New Keyword Tool From Google AdWords.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

About The Author: Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting. Beyond Search Engine Land, Ginny provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin. See more articles by Ginny Marvin

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There’s also the predictive search aspects of Google Now, where the device automatically shows me the kind of information Google thinks I’m looking for.

So, the chances are pretty strong that a good amount of Google Glass activity is going to involve searching. Or “googling” as Glass suggests. Yep. Even though Google continues to protect its trademark by opposing the use of “google” as a substitute for “search,” the first command available in Glass isn’t “search,” it’s “google.” And in lowercase, even, like the rest of Glass’ commands. I’m shocked that Google’s lawyers OK’d this.

Search on Google Glass is unlike anything I’ve experienced before, mainly because Glass itself is, too. Consider:

• There’s no Web browser in Google Glass, so there’s nothing to navigate to.
• So, search on Glass is built for finding information, not for finding webpages.

That has a huge impact on how search works.

It took about 15 minutes of searching on Glass for me to fully appreciate what Google has been doing with the Knowledge Graph, Google Now and other search tools. A lot of what Google has been doing in search in recent years makes great sense on Glass, and I’m sure there’s more to come when things like Street View and interior business photos get integrated into Glass.

For now, though, you don’t get the fabled “10 blue links” or even the 2-3 links you might see on a smartphone when you use Glass for searching. You get universal search results, but you can’t tell the difference between an image result and a news result, for example. You don’t get sitelinks. You don’t get any links at all, for that matter.

What do you get when you search on Glass?

Cards.

Like all other info on Glass, each search result is presented as its own “card.” The displays are mostly in black-and-white, but there’s some font-weighting that separates the name of a result from its snippet. And most results/cards also indicate the source URL.

How Search Works On Google Glass

The first thing you have to know about searching via Glass is that, since there’s no keyboard, search is fully voice-activated. You start by saying “okay, glass,” then you say “google” to bring up the search screen.

As far as I can tell, “google” is the only word that starts a search. You can’t say “okay glass, search” or “okay glass, find” … it’s “google” followed by your search query.

Fortunately, Google’s voice recognition capabilities are pretty good — but they’re not perfect. I stumbled into a problem on a recent trip to Philadelphia: I was looking for a restaurant called “Estia,” but Glass heard me saying the letters S, T and A. It tried to give me a search result for “St. A,” whatever or whoever that is. When I tried again and said the more complete phrase, “estia restaurant,” Glass got it right.

The second thing you have to know, as I mentioned in my first Glass Diary article, is that Glass isn’t designed for long-form content. At Google’s I/O conference last week, Glass product director Steve Lee talked about what type of content fits Glass when he said

“…it’s not intended to watch a full-length movie or read a book; it’s designed around what we call micro-interactions. It’s designed for fast and brief experiences.”

Fast and brief. So, long pages of search results would be difficult to recreate — and to consume — via Glass. In other words, though search is a key function of Glass, the device itself isn’t built for certain types of searches, as you’ll see below.

(By the way, keep in mind that this is the first version of Glass and the device will change in the future. When I picked up my Glass, the Google rep specifically said that Explorers are getting Glass now to help Google test the device and improve it before a wider release. So what I describe below might not be how Glass works forever. You can bet it will improve.)

Navigational Queries

“Facebook” has been the most popular search term in the U.S. for four years running, so let’s start there.

When you tell Glass to “google facebook,” you get a total of 14 cards — one result on each. Here are the first three cards for this search term.

I compared my Glass-based results with a desktop search for the same term, and it appears that the first eight results are the same in both places. After that, the next six Glass results are a hodge-podge of things that don’t mirror at all what I see on the desktop. Glass shows a couple results/cards that aren’t in the top 30 results on the desktop. It also shows a card for MySpace — one of the “Related Searches” on the desktop — and Twitter, which isn’t a related search on desktop.

Overall, these results aren’t helpful; Glass doesn’t do well with navigational queries. Again, that’s because it’s not meant for browsing the Web.

Informational Queries

Glass is meant for consuming information, so it should do much better with information queries. And it does.

Albert Einstein

A search for “Albert Einstein” brings up seven results/cards — each one an exact match of a piece of information from Einstein’s Google Knowledge Graph entry.

While looking at the first card, Glass begins to read/speak the content to you. It continues reading that card even as you move on to look at the rest of the cards. The voice is somewhat robotic, but this is the right experience for anyone who wants information about Albert Einstein. Let me combine the other six cards into a single image:

Unlike the desktop Knowledge Graph, the Glass version has no clickable/speakable links to get more information and doesn’t include the “People also search for” results. But those are the only differences.

U2

Einstein is an easy result; his Knowledge Graph is all text and information. What about an informational search where the desktop Knowledge Graph data includes something more, like a scrollable list of songs? Here are the Glass results for “U2.”

Whoops. Glass heard “you too” when I said “U2.” Of course, they sound exactly the same, so you can’t fault Glass. (Maybe U2 should’ve stuck with one of its original names — Feedback or The Hype.) In fact, I tried a number of different ways to get Glass to figure out what I was searching for.

At one point, Glass thought I wanted YouTube.

I tried things like “capital U number 2″ and “letter U number 2″ with no luck. I tried “u2 rock band,” but that didn’t work, either. Glass thought I was looking for info about the Rock Band video game.

All this searching and I still hadn’t found what I was looking for.

I was feeling like I couldn’t search with or without Glass.

I was running to stand still; stuck in a moment I couldn’t get out of.

Vertigo was setting in.

And then it became a beautiful day: Saying “band U2″ worked.

Again, Glass showed a number of cards that exactly match the Knowledge Graph on desktop, but with a couple exceptions. The last card, Awards, was cut-off due to space limits on Glass and there was no way to see the full list that’s available on the desktop. And, as I expected, Glass results don’t include the “Songs” or “Albums” sections that show up on the desktop.

Space Needle

Here’s one more informational query — one where the search result isn’t what I expected. For the term “Space Needle,” Glass gives me a card that focuses on location, not information.

I can click that card to get directions or even call the Space Needle, but I can’t learn about it. The desktop Knowledge Graph for “Space Needle” is a combination of location and information, but the focus seems slightly more on the latter.

I’m thinking that Glass defaults to location for this type of query because it’s a mobile device, and directions/location is bound to be a more common use case than regular search. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my being based in Washington state, because a search for “Mount Rushmore” on Glass also defaults to the map, not to information.

Transactional Queries

You can probably guess that Glass isn’t going to do well on queries like “buy seattle mariners tickets” and other transactional terms. It’s similar to the section above on navigational terms — this isn’t what it was built for.

Glass gave me ten cards but, again, I couldn’t speak or click my way to any of the results. Above is the first card, which correctly refers to the official Mariners tickets page.

Google Now On Google Glass

Google Now works on Glass much like it does on other mobile devices. Immediately to the left of the main “ok glass” home screen are a number of cards showing information from Google Now. As of about 11:00 am PT today, Glass was only showing me two Google Now cards:

The white triangle in the upper right of the weather card tells me that I can click to reach a “sub-card” and, if I do, Google Now gives me a very basic three-day forecast.

Google Now is usually pretty quick, in my experience, but I noticed this morning that the Mariners baseball card didn’t begin to work until about 40 minutes after today’s game started. For the first two innings, it was still showing a card with last night’s score.

When I’ve been on the road recently in Philadelphia and San Francisco, Google Now also showed me cards with the name of a location where it thought I might be going (and I could tap to get directions). But in each case, its guesses were wrong.

Still, I’ve enjoyed the sports-related cards from Google Now. It was very convenient to be able to tap and swipe to get Mariners’ scores last week while the team played on the East Coast and I was at Google I/O.

Final Thoughts

Searching clearly shows some of Glass’ current limitations, but also reveals its strength as a quick source of information. More than that, though, searching reminds us what Glass is and what it’s meant to be.

Glass is a mobile information device (with visual capabilities like photo and video). It’s not designed for navigational or transactional queries. There’s no web browser. It’s designed for finding information, not web pages. And Glass tends to do well at finding information, particularly when that information is part of Google’s Knowledge Graph. (The “Space Needle” issue I raised above should be easily solvable by showing multiple cards — one for location and one for information, and letting me choose which one to drill-down into.) It also does pretty well at predictive search — i.e., guessing information I’d want via Google Now.

Maybe more than anything, Glass is also built for local searching and navigation. And that’ll be the subject of a future article in my Google Glass Diary series. Stay tuned!

Related Entries:

• Google Glass Diary, Day 1: Getting Started With Google Glass
• Google Glass Diary, Part 2: Positive Public Reactions The Importance Of Google I/O This Week

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Google | Google: Knowledge Graph | Google: Project Glass Eyeglasses | Search Features: Natural Language | Top News

About The Author: Matt McGee is Editor-In-Chief of Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. His web career continues to include a small number of SEO and social media consulting clients, as well as regular speaking engagements at marketing events around the U.S. He blogs at Small Business Search Marketing and can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee and/or on Google Plus. You can read Matt’s disclosures on his personal blog. See more articles by Matt McGee

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The new Bid strategies tool will be located in Shared Library. You can create a flexible bid strategy and then apply it to specific keywords, ad groups, and campaigns. Performance metrics by bidding strategy will be available in Bidding strategies.

There will be four types of flexible bid strategies available when the tool launches.  “Target search page location” is the only new bid strategy. It can be used to try to maintain top ad positions or at least first page positions.

Target CPA and Enhanced CPC strategies incorporate real-time bid data on “context signals ” like device  and location during each auction, and Google says it will be incorporated into other bid strategies in the future. Multiple bid strategies can be applied within the same campaign.

A couple of notes from the support documentation that could impact how and when you apply these strategies:

1. AdWords Editor users, you won’t be able to manage keywords, ad groups or campaigns to which you apply a bid strategy in Editor.
2. You can’t apply flexible bid strategies while running  a campaign experiment.

Look for Bid strategies to appear in early June.

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns

About The Author: Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting. Beyond Search Engine Land, Ginny provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin. See more articles by Ginny Marvin

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From Search Engine Land:

• Enhanced Campaigns: “Flexible Bid Strategies” Launching Soon

  Google will be rolling out “flexible bid strategies” in enhanced campaigns in the next couple of weeks. Flexible bid strategies will allow advertisers to override automated bidding and apply manual bidding strategies within a single campaign or across multiple campaigns. The new Bid strategies tool will be located in Shared Library. You can create a [...]

• Google Glass Diary, Part 3: How Search Works On Google Glass

  There are seven voice commands built in to this first “Explorers” edition of Google Glass. Two of those six are search-related: “google…” and “get directions to….” The others are “take a photo,” “record a video,” “send a message to,” “make a call to” and “start a Hangout with.” There’s also the predictive search aspects of [...]

• AdWords Keyword Planner Officially Launches

  As of today, all users will see the Keyword Planner available in their AdWords accounts. Keyword Planner combines data from the Keyword Tool and Traffic estimator, both of which will be sunsetted in about 60 days. Users will need to log in to their AdWords accounts to access Keyword Planner. The external version of Keyword [...]

• Google Testing Ads In New Google Maps, Pushes AdWords Location Extensions

  If you needed another reason to get your location extensions set up in AdWords, Google has announced its testing new ads in the new Google Maps. AdWords search ads set with location extensions can appear directly below the search box and on the map itself. Ads without location extensions can appear below the search box only and [...]

• Optimizing Your Digital Assets To Boost Rankings Branding

  Let’s say you’re responsible for developing revenues from both traditional and non-traditional advertising. You work with a digital staff of talented people to create lead-generating Web-based content, or perhaps you are in e-commerce and sell products. Maybe you’re a brick and mortar with a website, or perhaps a pure-play Internet business with no physical storefronts. [...]

• New Google Maps UI Calls For Shifts In SEO Tactics

  Last week at the Google I/O developer conference, a newly redesigned Google Maps design was introduced. While a number of online commentators have virtually gushed about the new interfacing from an end user perspective, there may be a less-than-rosy view for many local businesses. Thus far, the new version of Google Maps is pretty much [...]

• Didn’t Win The Powerball Or Mega Millions Jackpot? Try Your Luck At The AdWords Jackpot!

  Chances are you didn’t win this past Friday’s $190 million Mega Millions drawing or Saturday’s $600 million Powerball jackpot. However, the great news is that if you’re an SEM account manager, you can still try your luck at winning the AdWords Jackpot! What’s An AdWords Jackpot? An AdWords Jackpot happens when all of the paid [...]

• Google Notifies Sprint Of Spam Penalty; Seeks Advice In Google Help Forums

  The latest large brand to be hit with a user-generated content spam penalty notification is Sprint, the large US wireless communications company. Similar to Mozilla’s penalty and BBC’s penalty, Sprint was penalized for user-generated content spam on a portion of their site that was open to anyone to post links and content. Also similar to [...]

• Google Drops “Translated Foreign Pages” Search Option Due To Lack Of Use

  Google has quietly dropped the “Translated Foreign Pages” search filter from the Google search options menu. Google tells us the option was removed due to lack of use, but they say they are still committed to making the Web available to as many people, in as many languages, as possible. The translated foreign pages search [...]

• SMX East Registration Open – Best Rate Available Now, Save $300

  Change is constant in search and social media marketing, and the next few months won’t be an exception: Google promises a significant Penguin update; Bing plans to roll out its version of Product Listing Ads; authorship and authority will have greater influence on search results; and Twitter, Facebook and others will continue introducing new ad [...]

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• Searching On Google Glass? See How In Glass Diary Part 3
• New Google+ App For Android Now Available Following Google+ Updates Announced At I/O
• Google Launches Real-Time Bidding Platform ‘Open Bidder’ [BETA], Seeking Testers
• Google Rebuilds AdMob To Include A Conversion Optimizer Tool Local Payments Feature
• Google Mobile App Analytics To Get Google Play Integration, Tag Manager for Mobile Apps
• Yahoo Buys Tumblr For $1.1 Billion, Promises “Not To Screw It Up”
• Rumor: Yahoo! To Announce Updates To Flickr During Today’s Press Event
• Game Over: Google+ Games To Be Shut Down June 30th
• Two New Shoes Drop On Google: UK Tax Whistleblower And Canadian Antitrust Action
• Pinterest Introduces “Rich Pins” With More Content To Drive More Actions
• After The IPO: Facebook Survives Its “Year Of Living Dangerously”
• YouTube Turns 8 Years Old
• What’s Tumblr Worth To Yahoo? Board Says $1.1 Billion.
• Microsoft Slams Google In Nasty, Internal Parody Of Chrome Ad
• Yahoo Beats Back $2.75 Billion Yellow Pages Verdict On Appeal
• Marketo Scores In IPO, Shares Close Up 77%

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications Portal Features

• APIs for Data-Driven Marketers, SEOmoz

Local Search Maps

• A Tour of the New Google Maps [15 Screenshots], Small Business Search Marketing
• Old and New Google Maps Compared, Screenwerk
• Google Maps Local Business Ratings Updated, Search Engine Roundtable

Link Building

• SEO Link Building ALERT! Paid-Organic Distribution Is The Future, aimClear Blog

Paid Search

• Should You Include the Same Keyword with All Match Types in AdWords?, www.wordstream.com

Searching

• How does Google think about search quality when it relies on subjective signals?, YouTube

SEO SEM

• 5 Essential Local SEO Tools for Marketing a Small Business Online, Search Engine People
• Bing Ads Academy – Importing your Google AdWords Campaigns into Bing Ads, Bing Ads Blog
• Hunted by the Algorithm, Competitors and SEO’s, State of Search
• Penguin 2.0 in the Wild? SEO Findings From Google’s Phantom Update on May 8th, 2013, hmtweb.com
• Penguin 2.0: Should you rewrite your evergreen site copy?, seocopywriting.com
• Phone Call Tracking Basics for Maintaining Local Search Data Integrity, MnSearch
• UK payday loans serps update?, SEO Home
• Unfortunately, Sustainable SEO is Slow, Search Marketing Sage

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land’s News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here.
See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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When it comes to infographics, you may find yourself scratching your head at the many conflicting claims out there from the marketers that be. “Infographics are dead,” they say, but you must have a content strategy to survive. “Infographics are dead,” they say, but Facebook and Google+ are putting more and more emphasis on visual content.

The complexity of marketing your business on Google is rising as search success becomes increasingly intertwined with your social media presence and how you interact with your customers. Your website content and external links are no longer enough to gain Google’s trust. Publishing fresh content on your site means nothing if no one is reading it — and it means even less if no one is sharing it to their social networks.

As a business, your primary marketing goal is always to generate leads. Leads are certainly generated from dominating search results — but what if I told you that a solid content marketing strategy could get you leads, even if it didn’t result in #1 rankings right away?

For thousands of years, people have been creating “infographics.” From cave paintings to Egyptian hieroglyphics, visual representations of information (events, ideas, stories, etc.) have existed since the dawn of humanity.

Innovators of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as William Playfair and Florence Nightingale, began using charts, graphs and histograms to make things happen and influence change. As a content medium for online marketers, the modern infographic rose to popularity in 2009 and has continued to grow ever since. Today’s infographics are analogous to the posters you used to hang on the walls of your dorm room and college apartment — the ones with “Beers of the World” and “Ultimate Party Schools.”

As SEOs and online marketers have sought to keep up with the latest trends, infographics quickly became a new weapon in the content marketer’s arsenal. Infographics have also become a staple of publishers, thanks to their visual, easy-to-consume nature and virality.

Use Of Infographics For Social Sharing / Signals In Search

The purpose or goal of an infographic shapes the direction of the piece itself. Often, they’re used to visualize a concrete set of data or a new concept, present the findings of a study, or demonstrate a product or service.

As SEO professionals, our team’s main goal is usually to generate traffic, backlinks and social shares. When a client presented us with the idea of creating and publishing monthly infographics with the main intent of getting new leads, we made sure to reinforce the fact that  leads would likely be a secondary benefit after increased traffic and rankings.

Skeptics No More

The first infographic we created and published for our client, LocateADoc.com, was informational and illustrated how and why women should perform self-breast exams to prevent cancer. The audience ate it up — to date, it has accumulated over 3,000 unique pageviews and has been shared 2,506 times on various social networks. After launch, we excitedly reported on the 845 pageviews it received on launch day, but came up short when the client asked about leads.

We started the next month’s project with leads in mind. This doctor directory receives more organic traffic on cosmetic surgery related keywords than dentistry, optometry and just about any other practice type combined. Thinking about what our target audience is most interested in, as well as what our client does best, the team created a piece using the ASAPS 2011 research (pdf) highlighting pricing and trends in the cosmetic surgery industry.

This infographic was published Nov.13, 2012, and generated a 2,100% increase in leads compared to the breast self exam piece. (A “lead” in this case is defined as a new patient contact form, submitted by a user who entered the site through the infographic’s hosting URL.) Month after month, this infographic continues to generate leads for the site, with a current Cost Per Lead (CPL) 77% below the target CPL.

The “cost” was calculated based on the total billed to the client for the ideation, research, creative content and graphics of the piece and initial syndication to social sharing sites.

To date, infographics published on LocateADoc’s site have continued to generate new patient leads with an overall CPL 14% lower than the target.

Long Live The Infographic

Leveraging a content piece after its initial traffic spike has subsided also proves to be an effective means of continued lead generation and backlink creation. Continued creation and publication of infographics established LocateADoc as a source for great content, which has also improved the reach of each subsequent infographic.

Given the right content for an audience and a solid long-term marketing plan in place for the distribution of the piece, infographics can certainly generate leads for your business.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a plumber (history of toilets infographic!) or a lawyer (history of toilet related lawsuits infographic!), there is always a way to visually transmit information pertinent to your business. And, the current generation of Internet addicts gobble infographics up like candy.

So, long live the infographic! Take a stab at creating a piece worthy of social sharing and you may even generate some new business along with your backlinks.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Infographics | Search Social