Web Development Web Marketing Copywriting

1. The benefit of the internet to your circulation/audience development efforts, and how important it is to your company
2. How to use email to renew or acquire new subscribers
3. E-mail tests - what’s working, what’s not working
4. Search engine marketing - what are you using and how is it working
5. Banner ads - are they working, what have you changed, where do you have them
6. How has can spam effected your subscription efforts? How has it effected your list rental activities? How has it effected your use of outside lists for subscription promotion?
7. Web agents - are they still working?
8. Blogs - are they a source of names? How can we get subscription information onto a blog?
9. Email files - do you have separate files for circulation, web casts, eNL, or a combined database for all? Advantages and disadvantages for each.

Gloria Adams, Pennwell - Moderator
Laura Wilson, NEJM - Panelist
Sean Fulton, GCN Publishing - Panelist
Brian Klais, Netconcepts - Panelist

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A couple months ago I shared one of my Google secrets, since that secret no longer worked. Specifically, it was how to obtain a list of the most important web sites according to Google.

Now, surprisingly, this little trick appears to work again (it stopped working in 2003), thanks to a bug introduced into Google’s algorithm. Two months ago, a search for http would have revealed results like HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol Overview and Welcome! - The Apache HTTP Server Project. Today, these sites appear nowhere near the top of the results. Instead, the top results are occupied by a “who’s who” list of highly important web sites — sites that don’t include the word http anywhere in the text of the page.

As already noted by blogger Nathan Weinberg, this same phenonemon occurs when you search for www.

One thing I found curious is that http and www Google queries return different results. Now these results are NOT in order of PageRank score, at least not the PageRank scores as revealed by the Google Toolbar. You can verify this to be the case yourself simply by using SEO Chat’s PageRank Search tool. Indeed, it’s a well-known fact within the SEO community that the PageRank scores served up by the Google Toolbar servers are not the actual PageRanks used by Google in the ranking algorithm. PageRank debate aside, perhaps this list offers us a (now) rare glimpse at some of Google’s Chosen Ones — the most important sites on the Internet according to Google.

What makes me say this is due to a bug in Google? For one thing, these results are NOT relevant to the search query. Secondly, I’ve uncovered another bug newly introduced into Google’s algorithm, namely that the inurl: query operator does not work properly, and I think these two bugs might be related. For an example of this second bug in action, search Google for site:blogs.msdn.com scoble inurl:msnsearch and the top search result is currently blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/archive/2004/11/10/255417.aspx. Note there’s no msnsearch in that URL!

I’ve compiled a list the top 1000 results for each of the two queries for your convenience. You’ll see, they do vary quite dramatically:

(more…)

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Most companies don’t even realize their competitors are “eating their lunch” online - ranking higher in the search engines, getting more traffic, converting more visitors into buyers and enjoying better returns on their website investment. They simply don’t know how well their website is performing. And they are missing out on valuable e-business opportunities.

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Imagine an online ad that costs you nothing per impression, guarantees both a local and worldwide audience actively seeking your products and services, and offers 6 times the click-through rate of a banner ad… a search engine listing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the ultimate targeted, low cost and high return weapon in the e-marketer’s promotional arsenal.

Learn how to maximize your reach through the “organic” (unpaid) results in the search engines:

• Which search engines to target
• Keyword research tools and tactics
• Writing copy that “sings” to the search engines
• Benchmarking against your competitors
• Link building strategies that work
• Optimal search engine architecture
• Best practices to emulate
• Scams exposed
• Case studies - including the “inside scoop” on what worked and what didn’t
• Making your e-commerce or database-driven site “search engine friendly”
• Measuring the return on your search engine marketing investment
• Developing a search engine marketing plan
• Criteria for selecting a search engine marketing agency
• Online tools and resources

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“My job is to make my boss look good, and when SecureWorks hired Netconcepts for SEO I expected them to make me look good - and they definitely did.”

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In order to start writing for maximum search engine visibility, you need to start thinking like a search engine.

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Today I had the pleasure to hear web content guru Gerry McGovern speak at a full-day workshop in Wellington, New Zealand. He’s got to be one of the very best speakers I’ve ever heard! His course material, his sense of humor, his thought-provoking insights, and especially his Irish accent — had everyone in the audience mesmerized. Here’s a sampling of the day’s take-aways:

• Action vs. reaction: If a site visitor’s action results in a reaction from your web site that has a wait time exceeding that of the action, the visitor will become frustrated. That frustration will build as more . For example, clicking on the File menu tab only takes a second, so the time it takes for the menubar to appear underneath should take no more than a second.
• 80/20 rule of content: For many sites, less than 20% of the site content accounts for over 80% of the pageviews. With Microsoft.com it was 1% of their content accounted for 99% of the pageviews. In fact, 35% of their pages had never been viewed! That’s well over a million pages of content that people at Microsoft worked hard to write ? for nothing. Focus your efforts on the copy that will be read, not on the copy that won’t.
• Columns: Readers use their peripheral vision to keep track of the beginning of the next line down while they are reading across a line. So with text that has a long linewidth, it becomes difficult to read. Gerry recommends a three column format, with 20% or so of the width going to the first column (use this column for navigation), 60% or so dedicated to the middle column, and another 20% or so for the right hand column.
• Call for action: Always end your pages with a clear action for the reader to take. Never leave the reader hanging, wondering what to do next. The center column at the end of the body copy is a critical piece of real estate for these calls for action.
• Links in copy: According to Gerry, links in the middle of body copy distracts the readers making it difficult for them to read the paragraph, and it connotes “hey, click on me… the rest of this text is really boring!” Instead of embedding links within the body copy, consider using the right hand column for the related links. If there are important links there that take the reader to the “next step,” also repeat them at underneath the body copy in the center column.
• Simplicity: Einstein purportedly was quoted as saying “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Apply this idea to your web copy. Keep your copy as short and simple as possible. People tend not to read long copy on the web. With a 300 word page, 50% will read it to the end; 500 words, 20%; 1000 words, 5%. Gerry recommends headings of 4 to 8 words, summaries of 30 to 50 words, sentences of 15 to 20 words, and paragraphs of 40 to 70 words.
• “Kill your darlings”: William Faulkner once said this. If there’s a particular expression or way of saying something that you’re particularly fond of, delete it from your copy, because you’re probably overusing it.

Gerry covered so much more than this, but it would take a book to cover it all. Oh, wait a minute… there is a book covering it all. Buy Gerry’s book, Content Critical.

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“We are grateful to Stephan for planting the seed for one of the most successful Web projects The Carter Center has undertaken to-date.”

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“Stephan Spencer has been a steadfast supporter of our work, particularly in the initial phases. He provided, through Netconcepts, our website facility gratis and was always available for consulting on matters of communication website improvement. I consider his technical knowledge is of the highest level in the field.”

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