You can read more about Google’s PageRank algorithm on Wikipedia.com or google.com.

GSC's PageRank

Every now and then, Google “refreshes” its PageRank rankings (not exactly posted when or how they do this).  Shortly after Thanksgiving, GSC’s PageRank went from “4″ to “zero” - urgh.  Not good for anyone, but especially not good for us, because we actually teach a Search Engine Optimization Seminar – so for us to have a PageRank of zero – is, well, hard to explain.

But, when this happens, know that it’s temporary (if you’re practicing ethical website optimization).  Sure enough, we got an nice year-end boost from Google and our PageRank re-appeared today at a “5″ - a great way to end 2008.

1. Turn the lights on. Update your site - your website shouldn’t continue to advertise summer sales in the middle of December. Get those best sellers out on the homepage, and highlight any holiday specials. Let your customers know you’re still open for business!
2. Decorate the tree. Add the “holiday spirit” to your website by doing something as simple as revamping the logo just for the holiday season, or adding a Christmas banner on the top of your website. But beware - too many holiday elements runs the risk of coming off too blatant or tacky. Find a healthy balance by adding either a holiday icon set or a themed logo, but not both. By the way - no one wants to see a mass of snowflakes floating around their browser window.
3. Send out invitations. Get old customers to return by sending out seasonally themed newsletters. As we start buying gifts and checking people off our lists, there’s always someone who’s just impossible to shop for. A tastefully designed promotional email in a customer’s inbox can be the perfect reminder that your store may have just the gift they’ve been looking for.
4. Drop some hints. Use the power of suggestion - make it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for with cleverly phrased promotions and call to actions like “Gifts for Kids” or “Get him something special this year.” Try a “Great Gift Ideas” list on your homepage to get your customers exactly where you want them to be.
5. Spell it out. Delivery times are at the top of every e-shopper’s concerns. Ease their qualms by displaying information about shipping times, order cut-off dates for holiday delivery, and express shipping options in a conspicuous place.
6. Bundle Up! Combine your best sellers into a “gift set” that shoppers can add to their carts with one click. Package them together in an attractive gift box or basket.
7. Prepare in advance. Get your shop SEO’d early. It can take a month or more for major search engines to index your shop. Some top keywords for the holidays are: gift, gift idea, unique gift, Christmas gift, holiday gift, baby git, gift for him, gift for her…
8. Keep it simple. I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of person that loves to get gift cards and cash for Christmas. Not only that, but I’m the kind of shopper that likes to give out gift cards as much as I like to receive them! Offer gift certificates for the shopper that isn’t sure what to buy, or who needs a last-minute gift.
9. Go global. Remember that the holiday season doesn’t just consist of Christmas. Spend some real estate on your website by catering towards shoppers that celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanza. Branching out can get you customers that your competitors didn’t!
10. Throw in some gifts of your own. The reason why some people prefer shopping online as opposed to going to the mall is because it’s easy and they don’t have to get out of their seats. Make it even easier for them by offering free gift wrapping or free wrapping or shipping with purchases over a certain amount.

These are just a few ways you can generate more sales this season, and even though it may be a little too late in the game to use some of these tips today, you’ll always have next year and the year after that! Of course, it helps a lot to have an eCommerce solution for your website that’s easy for you to use and manage. Golden State Communication’s weapon of choice is ASPDotNetStoreFront! Take a look at our eCommerce portfolio to see all of our great storefront sites.

In Australia’s capital of Canberra, lawyers tracked down a couple that had defaulted on a loan by doing a search on their email addresses. They then proceeded to serve them a legal summons through Facebook’s private messaging feature.

After a landmark court ruling, the Australian Supreme Court ruled that Facebook is a sufficient way of serving legal documents to defendants who cannot be found.

Other unconventional yet incredible ways Facebook has been used in the past are:

• Finding transplant donors for seriously ill children
• Fighting Terrorism
• Getting elected to the Maine House of Representatives

• Keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation
• One-click plugin installs
• Drag and drop Dashboard customization
• Batch Post Editing
• click here for a full feature list

Watch the video to find out more!

WordPress is a state-of-the-art content management system and publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Golden State Communications has created sites using Wordpress, like Kaikea Entertainment, SA Recycling, Axis Project Management, and the Urban Watch & Co Blog.

Of course, there’s a huge logical problem with using tables for layout: the layout of a site is not actually tabular data. And we coders don’t like that bit of bad logic. Also, while tables solve the initial layout problem, they are significantly harder to update.

That said, there often comes a time while coding a site when a designer might entertain the wish to give up and use tables. So we made a site based around that frustration we felt when browsers wouldn’t obey our CSS. Brian created a flash widget that gives a designer 47 minutes to wrestle with CSS. After that time, the widget buzzes and provides the table code for the designer to use.

The whole thing was a joke that we just got bored enough to execute. But here’s where the story gets interesting… After sitting dormant for 9 months, suddenly someone found the site. And not just someone but a very popular code blog called Ajaxian. In one day the site’s visitors leapt from 0 to 400. The next day the site was picked up by a reddit user. At the end of the day, we had about 35,000 visitors.

The Google Analytics graph tells the story:

Impressive, huh?

More impressive is that within one day my Google Page Rank shot up to a 5. And while the instant popularity of the site caused envy in my friends who wished their sites could get 35,000 visitors in one day, I knew it wouldn’t last. Friends encouraged me to put Google Ads on the site, make t-shirts, anything. “This could be another dramatic hamster, Todd!”

But I declined. Give Up and Use Tables is a pretty pure form of internet meme. It’s a site that does one thing — execute a really nerdy joke. We had our day — literally one day — and that was it.

Or to put it another way:

The long graph shows the decline and fall:

It was a fun 24 hours. Golden State even received several referrals from the wave of traffic that hit the site. There are some lessons to draw from this on internet trends, viral marketing, and link-sharing. But I’m still basking in the fun of our joke entertaining so many people (and even inciting real argument). And while Brian and I might have let the domain lapse and the site disappear, Golden State has taken over hosting and will keep it as a geeky museum piece.

So if you’ve ever felt cross-browser frustration with CSS, feel free to succumb to your urge and Give Up and Use Tables.

Way to go Churm Media… LOVE the energy that you bring to Orange County Business!

Rael Isacowitz (founder, BASIpilates.com) gave a nice introduction to me as we gave the instructors a preview of a Pilates OnDemand Software Program that we think will forever change the way people practice and document Pilates exercises.  Check out the video here.

MISTAKE #1 - Developing a website first, THEN bring in the SEO team. 

Many people call us and want us to market their existing website using SEO techniques.  MOST web designers have absolutely no knowledge of SEO and how it works.  The files should have the keywords in it. 

Example #1: http://URL.com/ecommerce-web-design

Example #2: http://URL.com/current/index.php#2

So when a search engine’s spider searches the web, it will choose example #1 because it knows what the webpage is about.  In addition, your keywords should be in the content of your web page. For instance, if the theme of your  website is about apparel, one of your webpages should be T-shirts. Another webpage should be pants.  FYI Google indexes individual web pages, not websites.

MISTAKE #2 - No keywords in the <title> and <description> tags nor in the content of the webpage.

This field is one of the top features search engines use when establishing relevancy for a particular keyword.  Nobody is going to type your URL into the search bar (unless it’s on accident). Prospects type in the keywords.  If you place the keyword at the front of the title tag, then the search engine knows what your page is about.  People are going to spend their money anyway, why not make yourself easy to find. The biggest waste of space is putting your Company Name or URL in the title! 

Good <TITLE>Ecommerce Web Design - 10 questions to ask an Ecommerce Web Design Company, </TITLE>

Bad   <TITLE>Acme Company: Welcome to our website.</TITLE>

MISTAKE #3 - Developer writes the same <title> and <description> for every webpage.

This looks like SPAM to search engines.  Go to google.com and type your URL into the search bar like this (don’t forget ’site’):     

site:YourURL.com

If the headline and the description say the same thing over and over again, you have a PROBLEM!

MISTAKE #4 - No Sitemap.

“The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs for a site. The protocol was written to be highly scalable so it can accommodate sites of any size. It also enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can’t reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines.

This document describes the formats for Sitemap files and also explains where you should post your Sitemap files so that search engines can retrieve them.

Please note that the Sitemap Protocol supplements, but does not replace, the crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting a Sitemap (or Sitemaps) to a search engine, you will help that engine’s crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

Using this protocol does not guarantee that your webpages will be included in search indexes. (Note that using this protocol will not influence the way your pages are ranked by Google.)

Google adheres to Sitemap Protocol 0.9 as dictated by sitemaps.org. Sitemaps created for Google using Sitemap Protocol 0.9 are therefore compatible with other search engines that adopt the standards of sitemaps.org”  -Google- https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/protocol.html

MISTAKE #5 - No marketing plan or trackablilty.

How are people going to find your website? Your website and webpages must be optimized for your target market.  When somebody types in a keyword, you should have your landing page specifically tailored to that keyword.  This visitor should NOT be sent to the home page.  Example: the prospect types in Plasma TV 46″.  This will lead to a landing page with Plasma TV’s 46″, not the home page which has refrigerators & stereo systems. If the user doesn’t see what they are searching for, they will hit the back button.  You can also use Google Adwords to market on a PPC (pay-per-click) basis.

Use Google Analytics (formerly Urchin) to track what webpages your visitors are going to, how long they are on your website, and how often they just hit the back button and leave (bounce rate).

You can find out more about this at http://www.google.com/analytics/

MISTAKE # 6 – Outsourcing your Ecommerce web development

Many web development firms outsource labor to India.  There are language barriers to deal with.  Also, the time zones will delay any type of response.  Most communication is going to be through e-mail.  The solution is not to do it.   Make sure your developer does everything in house.  There should be specialization for each development phase (designer, programmer, marketing).  The ‘jack of all trades’ cannot build a professional website all by himself.

MISTAKE # 7 – Cheaper is Better

Price is usually a factor when investing into a website.  Allocate a budget before calling up web development firms.  If you are looking for a low budget & simple website, there are many companies that can help you.  You can search Craigslist and find a ton of part-time developers there. Or you can do it yourself using GoDaddy or Yahoo! Small Business.  You will have to know HTML.

Most professionally customized websites start off around $3- $6K for a static website.  A fully integrated eCommerce website is 10K and above.  I encourage you to look at the features for GoDaddy and Yahoo! Small Business.  Also take a look at the features a professional web development company uses. Visit AspDotNetStorefront’s eCommerce shopping cart features (POS, Shipping, accounting, Inventory, CMS, Supplier).  You will see that cheaper is not better.

MISTAKE #8 - Text is in the image itself.

Most web development companies insert image and give it a regular file name.  Think of an image as a picture. Our human eyes can read the text on the image itself.  I don’t think Google has character recognition capabilities to read images.  A developer should write the keywords in the file itself to let search engines know what the picture is about. 

MISTAKE #9 - Confusing navigation & no call to action.

Many small to midsize companies have websites that are informational only. We think of websites as a tool to: 1) grab an e-mail for a newsletter 2) Lead generation “Contact Us” 3) Sell something through an eCommerce Store Front. 

A mortgage company would most likely use the “Contact Us” form for lead generation.  An online shoe store would sell an item over the internet.  The call to action in this online store would be a “BUY NOW” button, “Free Shipping” or “Super FAST Shipping” (I need my stuff now). 

When your web designer lays out the design, you don’t want a confusing navigation bar.  Our shoe example would have the following navigation:  Men’s Shoes, Women’s Shoes, Boys Shoes, Girls Shoes, and Toddler Shoes.

I’ve seen website mixing in Boys and Mens Shoes together.

MISTAKE # 10 Flash intro, flashing banner ads, pop-ups, auto loading music

I don’t think I have to spend much time here.  All of us hate those Flash intros and pop ups, so why use them on your site.

#1) Split Testing:
The benefits of split testing are great. I love split testing my ‘Ecommerce Web Design’ ads.  I rotate my ads to show evenly throughout the day. Over time I can identify the winner and get rid of the loser.  Once I get rid of the loser ad, I write a competitor ad to see if I can get a higher CTR.  To add this feature go to ‘Campaign Settings’ and click ‘Rotate’ under Ad Serving.

#2) Knowing your keywords:

Everybody wants to be right.  Even I thought our #1 keyword would be ‘Custom Ecommerce’ or some variation of it.  Let the numbers do the work.  Our keyword ‘Ecommerce Web Design’ brings us 5 times the traffic in comparison to the 20 other keywords combined! So I began to not only optimize the landing page for that particular keyword to increase relevancy for SEM, but I also did it to optimize the page for SEO.

#3) Keyword matching type: Broad, Phrase, and Exact match types.

Keyword matching allows you to control how precise a user’s search must be to trigger your ad on Google search pages. Defining how broadly or narrowly your keywords are targeted helps you reach the audience you want. In general, the more targeted your keywords and ads are, the more likely you are to reach potential customers. -Google-   Please visit http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/19135.html to get an in depth view of this subject.

#4) Keyword in header
Try this: Write one ad with your keyword in the header and one without the keyword in the header.  Do it for about 1-2 weeks and look at your numbers.  You’ll be surprised.  Most competitors have not figured this one out yet!

#5) Keyword in Subdomain
For this to work, you have to create a subdomain through your back admin office.  Put the keyword in front of the subdomain like this:  EcommerceWebDesign.goldencomm.com    Here’s another example with a different keyword of ours:  StrategicEcommerce.goldencomm.com

#6) Dynamic Keyword insertions
Do you ever wonder how Amazon.com and Best Buy have all these ads written for every keyword you enter?  They don’t have a department filled with hundreds of people typing up individual ads.  They use dynamic keyword insertion.  We use this too, especially for the local search results.  Write this in the headline when you are creating the ad.
{KeyWord} in OC
If the keyword makes the headline more than 25 characters (including spaces), it will only show “in OC”.  So make sure you know how this works.  Or you can leave {KeyWord} all by itself in the headline. The keyword which the user typed in will always come up.  If you don’t capitalize the W in keyword, the second word will be lower case instead of uppercase.

#7) Write Winning Ads
This one combines #4 & #5 into the ad.  Your ad should do two things.
1)    Attract quality traffic AND 2) Repel unqualified traffic.

Follow this Format:
Your #1 Keyword in header
What you do better than competition
Weed out unqualified people here.
AnotherKeyWordInSubdomain

This is our ad:
Ecommerce Web Design
Fully integrated eCommerce sites!
Customized sites starting at $12K
StrategicEcommerce.GoldenComm.com

In this example I try to weed all the small timers out.  I actually try to scare them away!  By the way, our eCommerce sites do start around $12K anyway.

#8) Conversion Goals & Google Analytics
Without conversion goals or Analytics, your advertising campaigns are just a shot in the dark.  A website should be a tool to grab contact info for a newsletter, a “Contact Us’ form, or to sell something (eCommerce) through the internet.  Usually an eCommerce website will have the conversion goal set to the ‘Thank You for your Purchase’ page.
The new Google Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online. Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites. Google Analytics is free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners. -Google- http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics can show which keywords are generating a positive or negative ROI.  This program can be tied into Google Adwords.

#9) Poor/Ok/Great quality score
Use keywords in the content.  This will help raise your quality score.  The more relevant your landing page is to the keyword, the lower your CPC will be.  We are in a higher position than our competitors and pay less per Click than they do.  You should always strive for a quality score of “GREAT”.  Sometime when you have dozens of keywords this becomes difficult.  Not only will you achieve higher relevancy by using the keywords in the content, but you will also optimize the webpage for SEO.

#10) Using your Competitor’s Keywords:
I saved the best for last….  Some people think this is unethical, but their eyes open wide with dollar signs.  My philosophy is this: “If my #1 competitor made it to the top, what can I learn from them so I can get there myself?  Why should I do all this hard work if they have already done it. “
Here’s how to rip the keywords off your competitors website:
Login to Adwords> Tools> Keyword Tool> select Website Content
This will generate relevant keywords based on the text found on your webpage.  Enter in your competitor’s website instead.  This will not only give their keywords, but similar keywords as well.  I don’t think Google has caught on to this, but let’s enjoy this while it lasts.  Google even organizes all the keywords for you!
Please reply to this post and let me know if you found any of this information helpful.  I would greatly appreciate it.