It’s true. Google has announced a variation or tweaks to their seo algorithm to “lower the ranking of sites that provide a bad user experience”. One factor that is certainly on the list to providing this ‘bad user experience’ is the inclusion of ads that are immediately visible when a visitor arrives on your site.

Below is an excerpt of a post on Search Engine Watch on just how Google is going to be looking at the layout of websites, and the ‘stuffing’ of ads above the fold.

Google Penalises Sites With Too Many Ads

Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts, in a blog post, reported that the “Page Layout algorithmic improvement” will effect 1 percent of searches globally – which is no small number considering Google powers at least 3 billion searches per day globally, according to comScore estimates.

Google’s Page Layout Update

The target is too many ads, which means the area that is visible to users when they first arrive on your site prior to scrolling. Many website overload this area with AdSense ads, among others, to make as much money from advertising as they can – even this page from Google notes that “the eCPM for above the fold units is approximately 80% higher than below the fold units. You’ll get the best results by having more ad units above the fold.”

Following the rollout of Google’s Panda update last year, many speculated that ad-heavy sites were targeted, especially after Cutts mentioned that one thing Panda specifically was looking at was whether a website had an excessive number of ads.

Regardless of whether it was part of Panda, it’s definitely confirmed now. On this, Google is clear: “Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.”

“If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience,” Cutts wrote.

However, what remains unclear is what is a “normal” vs. “excessive” ad ratio. Also, which screen resolution is Google most concerned with? What is the “standard” size, according to Google?

And what is “content” considered in this change? Is “content” a picture? Links? Text? Video? Navigation? Social sharing links? Google doesn’t say.

In the comments of the Google blog post, one commenter points out that it’s unclear how an “ad” is defined by Google. “Does it include only AdSense? Yahoo PPC? Banners and other display advertising? Affiliate links? ‘Ad’ is a pretty broad term.”

Fixes

Worried your site might be impacted, or perhaps you already have seen a drop in traffic and you suspect it might be due to this update? Google tells publishers to make sure your content isn’t “obscured or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly.”

Google provides a Browser Size tool to show you how your website appears in various screen resolutions. Google also pointed to this page as a resource for more Chrome extension alternatives.

Below is a graphic depicting what proportion of the screen viewers visiting Be Dynamic Online using the Google browser can actually see. Very interesting isn’t it? So how much of this very important real estate are you wasting on ads, banner graphics and other ‘not so important’ information?

So you see, as I have the resolution set on my own computer, in fact 50% of users do as well. What does this mean? That 50% of visitors to my site are seeing the content I am sharing (viewable on this image). And if you look closely, I have a ‘freebie’ incentive to build my email list. In fact not even 1% of users will see this optin without scrolling down the page.

Think I need to do some tweaks to my own page layout? Yes indeedy!

While the update hasn’t received an official name, here’s to hoping (as suggested on WebmasterWorld) that this update becomes known as the Google SOPA (Stop Overly Pushy Ads) Update, considering it came out the same week as Google’s SOPA protest.

However, I do not have ads on this page so I avoid being slapped as Google penalises sites with too many ads.

How To Apply Mobile Marketing To Your Business

Mobile marketing has so many possibilities! What can you use? What can you do? How can you apply it to your own business needs? It is rare to find a company that will market just like yours, so why not take advantage of that and create a marketing plan that works for you? This article can help you.

Send relevant messages. Texts interrupt whatever your customers are doing, so send them urgent, relevant information such as “online bidding starts in 15 minutes”. Don’t repeat the email you have already sent. If you have nothing, or nothing urgent to say don’t send a text. Use emails to provide general information.

Optimize your mobile website for local searches to ensure that people will find you. For example, when you are out in a neighborhood that you don’t know, you will probably search for “(location) Indian restaurant.” If you want to be found, be sure that you focus on those types of keywords for your site.

Keeping Your Customers

Keep in mind that mobile marketing is targeted for keeping your current customers, not acquiring new ones. Current customers know your product, and are much more open to getting texts from you and trust your website. New customers will probably find you using a regular computer, though it won’t take them long to sign up for texts.

Find a way to get your customer’s phone number. Ask them to sign up for a member’s club or simply give them a sheet to fill in when they buy something at your store. Make them understand that you will be sending them messages about products and discounts in the future.

Isn’t creating your own mobile marketing plan exciting? There are so many possibilities. As you have seen in this article, there are a lot of ways this can be done and no two techniques will yield the same results. Customize your mobile marketing plan. Choose from the many options available to work with your business needs and budget.

Over the coming 24 hours or so, a number of ‘big’ online providers will be blacking out their sites in protest of this pending act. Many taking action with the forthcoming ‘blackout’ include such big players as the Warrior Forum and Wikipedia.

It is important that regardless of the country in which you conduct your business, that you be informed of what is going on.

Here is just a taste of what appeared on www.theglobeandmail.com

The pending legislation would boost the power of the Justice Department to punish foreign websites that infringe copyright. It has also pit Hollywood, which has lobbied for the legislation as a tool to protect content, against Silicon Valley, which sees it as a menace to free speech.

Online lobbying efforts to kill the bill already appear to have paid off. On Saturday, the Obama administration signalled it does not support aspects of the pending legislation – the Stop Online Piracy Act – and depicted it as a threat to global innovation.

The digital dust-up, however, continues with media baron and Twitter newbie Rupert Murdoch jumping into the fray decrying the Obama administration’s stance with a tweet.

“So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery,” posted Mr. Murdoch, News Corp’s chairman and chief executive officer.

The White House statement, posted Saturday on a new “We The People” page on its website, was issued in response to two online petitions against the legislation.

“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response,” it said, “we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cyber security risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” It was signed by three of President Barack Obama’s top aides: Victoria Espinel, intellectual property enforcement co-ordinator; Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer; and Howard Schmidt, cyber-security co-ordinator for the national security staff.

Their joint statement, on behalf of the administration, was seen as a significant climbdown by some observers. In November, Maria Pallante, U.S. Register of Copyrights, testified at a congressional hearing that the law was crucial.

“It’s a significant retraction; a big win for the Internet and, frankly, for the hundreds of thousands of Internet users that have spoken out against SOPA,” said Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa that specializes in cyber law.

Read the entire post on the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) for more understanding of what is going on.

Many big players in the online world are showing their opposition to SOPA such as Google who are placing a black bar on the search field, whilst others are remaining fully operable despite voicing their opposition also.

Stay informed of what is going on with SOPA, and the effects, if any, to you as an online business owner.

Effective Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing can be an effective way to market your business. A collection of tips on what you need to know is provided below.

Do not send out offers by text too frequently. If you send them out too often, customers will not have the incentive to take up your offer because they know there will another one coming soon. You want to make your offer special so that customers will feel like they cannot miss a good deal which might not come again any time soon.

Use location based services like foursquare, yelp, gowalla, and where to get your business out there, on the mobile scene. Offer rewards for repeat visits and discounts for check in’s at your location. Special offers go a long way towards building customer loyalty and encouraging them to talk about you online.

Mobile Marketing Messages

Inform those that opt-in to mobile marketing messages just how many messages they can expect to receive day by day. This is the best way to ensure that you aren’t getting complaints later on due to too many messages too frequently. You want to be sure that those you are sending mobile messages to are fully aware.

Brand Identity

Make sure that your company and brand are instantly identifiable from the beginning of a mobile marketing message. If your consumers have to read though the entire text to find out what company it is from, they will be annoyed and possibly see it as a sneaky marketing ploy.

Remember to link properly when using mobile devices. Do not link to your home website, link to the mobile version of your website so that your customers can get the entire picture. If you do not have a mobile version, you really need to get to work on it and have one for the mobile users.

Well, hopefully the aforementioned collection of tips will help you know what to do and expect when it comes to mobile marketing. When handled with skill, this feature of marketing will prove to be a valuable aspect of your marketing plan.

Mobile Marketing Technology

Technology allows us to do many things. We can go anywhere at top speed, see anything as instantly as it happens, and buy anything from any location. Technology also allows us to advertise on anything. Mobile marketing uses technology to advertise on mobile devices, such as cell phones and tablets. The advice in this article will get you started with mobile marketing.

When staking out your mobile domain name, opt for an address that ends in ‘.mobi’ rather than ‘.com’. The latter indicates to users that your site is probably optimized for the traditional online browsing experience, which typically does not translate very well to surfing through a mobile or smartphone browser.

Get Right To The Point

When you are sending a text, it is important to get right to the point. Tell your customer why you are messaging, what kind of deal you are offering, how it will help them out, and also how to take advantage of the deal. This will leave your customers a lot happier because you are not just wasting their time.

Short and Specific

Compared to general Internet marketing, mobile marketing must be short and specific. For example, when targeting users on desktops, it is fine to use a banner ad that points to the main page of your web based store. However, on a mobile ad, even if you manage to get users to visit your website, the vast majority of visitors will not spend time browsing your website. It is far more effective to choose a specific product, and use a concise message that links them directly to a purchase page.

As stated before in the article above, we can do many things with technology. We can go anywhere, see anything, and even advertise on anything. With mobile marketing, anyone can advertise on any mobile platform, whether it is a cell phone or tablet. Using the advice from this article, you can use mobile marketing to advertise anything.

Do you want to live with more freedom and set your own working hours while making good money right at home? This is everyone’s dream yet few actually accomplish this, you can do this if you get into web design. The tips shared in this article can assist you towards creating a very effective website to maximize your online profits.

Avoid using too many graphics. While graphics are important to give your website a professional, cohesive and well-designed look, using too many of them can create clutter. You should never use graphics simply to decorate your site; they are used to improve your site. Having the appropriate number of graphics that do not create clutter improves the usability of your website, too.

To help your website visitors easily navigate through your site, design it so that it becomes easy to find “stuff.” When you have a simple site that makes it easy to locate information, you keep your visitors there much longer. If you make it difficult for them, then they will get frustrated and leave.

Web designers that have “designers block” might find inspiration by browsing other sites around the internet to see if they can get any ideas. This is a great way to discover a niche subject matter that is in high demand and would be well served by a website you create.

If you are hiring a web design company to create a web page for your company, you need to ask them for references. If the company does not have any references for you to contact you should avoid doing business with them because they more than likely do not have the experience that is needed to create a quality web page.

Looking back on all that you learned about web design can seem a bit overwhelming. If you’re feeling like this then you might want to reread these tips in this article so that you you can retain the knowledge you gained today, because all that you gained means nothing if you can’t remember and apply it.

If you’re looking at how to make sure your website is powerful, and effective, download a copy of our Free report “Why Most Websites Suck”. You’ll discover some useful tips and also things to avoid when building your own website.

Mobile Marketing’s Greatest Features

One of the greatest features of mobile marketing is that you can instantly reach your customers with up-to-date offers and information. If this appeals to you, check out the rest of the tips and tricks here in the following paragraphs.

Do not use abbreviations for text or use all capital letters to emphasize anything except for the call to action. Customers will not always know what abbreviations stand for, and using all caps to convey a message makes it difficult to read. It is also considered shouting in some cyber-circles.

Incorporate QR Codes

Incorporate QR codes into your print material. These can be scanned by most Smart phones, and then they bring the user directly to your website. This is an effective way to increase traffic to your site and let your customers know about valuable promotions. You can also track QR codes so that you can get an accurate idea of cost versus profit.

Drive People To Your Main Site

You might know that you should be using mobile marketing to drive people to your main site, but you should also use your main site to drive people to mobile marketing. The idea here is to retain customers and to keep in contact with them while they’re using mobile devices.

Powerful Psychological Impact

You should make your mobile marketing messages as personalized as possible. Spend the extra effort and technical expertise to link your messages to your customer database; customers will appreciate a message more if it is addressed to them by name. This technique can have a powerful psychological impact and greatly improve customer response.

To summarize, you have a message to get to your customers and you want it delivered without hesitation. You want to grab their attention. Well, mobile marketing provides the means to do this, and hopefully you picked up on some of the best methods to do so in this article. Spend a few minutes to review these pointers and get to work on studiously applying the suggestions to your business.

With all of the different types of marketing that exist, it might be hard to track down what works best with which media type. In the case of mobile marketing, it is pretty easy to narrow down not only what media you want to focus on but also what audience. Read this article for some great tips.

Remember when mobile marketing that not every mobile device is the same and thus the content you develop needs to cater to the general field and not anything overtly specific. For instance: Some people have slower connections than others, while others have smaller screen sizes. Be encompassing and not specific.

Mobile Marketing With Apps

If you want to increase your site traffic from users using mobile devices, develop a mobile application for your site, and offer it on your website. Apps are a convenient way for hand-held users to get to a service with one click. There are many tools and sites that can help you to develop your app, so take advantage of that.

Be loyal to your loyal customers don’t ignore them. It is easy for a marketer to get caught up in new customer acquisition to forget their loyal die hard clients. There are ways to control this one of easy ways is to go thought your client list and send out a random reward.

If you’re thinking about expanding out to a different market with a different product, make sure that you start this effort normally first before you branch out to mobile marketing. It’s going to be very difficult to pull people in from the mobile world to your new product, so go with what got you here and just repeat the process.

Recap – Why Mobile Marketing?

To summarize, there are a lot of different ways that you can get your message out there, but few are as direct as mobile marketing. As you saw by the examples in this article, it can be extremely beneficial if you know what you are doing. Hopefully it works well for you.

Does your business have a mobile friendly website? To make the most of mobile marketing, see the importance of having a mobile optimized website.

What is Mobile Marketing? Why Mobile Marketing? etc etc ..

Questions About Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is currently the hottest tool for marketers as more and more people, or potential buyers, now own a mobile/ cell phone or portable device. As this type of marketing is relatively new, there is not much advice around. This article contains a few tips and ideas to help you to get started with mobile marketing.

If you can, address the recipient of the message by their name. People will be more likely to pay attention to the message if it is addressed to them directly. Address them in an energetic manner so that you capture their attention and encourage them to find out more about your campaign.

Be sure to send text messages. People usually have a ringer that will go off whenever they receive a text. They also tend to check it right away. Just make sure to send small files such as photos of a new product that you have available, thus allowing the customer the option of receiving texts or not.

When creating advertising for the mobile web, you must ensure that the content is compatible with a majority of different mobile browsers. This is important to consider because you do not want to inadvertently restrict customers from being able to view your content. Stick with the major phone manufacturers and double check to see if there are any restrictions that the service providers may have in place.

Make it easy for a customer to opt out of your messages. If a customer does not want to receive mobile messages from your business any longer, you should have a simple code they can text to you to remove themselves. Having a process that is too complicated can make people remove your business from their life all together.

The tips above should have given you some ideas which will help you to create an effective mobile marketing ad campaign for your business. You should also continue to keep up to date with the latest developments in the mobile marketing industry so that you can stay ahead of your competitors.

Hopefully just some of your questions about what is mobile marketing and why mobile marketing have been answered.

Reasons Why Amazon Kindle Fire Is Best

Reasons why Amazon Kindle Fire Is Best – The release of the Amazon Kindle Fire has caused many users of tablets to make comparisons with the iPad, and other android tablets on the market.

So, the following article posted on Technically Easy shares their 5 top reasons why you should look at the Amazon Kindle Fire if you are in the market for an up to date tablet.

5 Reasons why Amazon Kindle Fire Is Best

1. Drastically Lower Cost

With cheapest iPadgoing for $499 and the Kindle Fire only $199, in terms of cost there’s no comparison. Apple has been able to justify their high cost of laptops and gadgets by offering unique and innovative must-have products. To the average consumer though, the tablet PC just isn’t a must-have accessory.

It’s nice and it’s convenient but there’s nothing that can be done on a tablet that can’t be accomplished just as efficiently on a laptop or smart phone. Amazon pinpointed the intrinsic problem with Apple’s tablet model: The cost doesn’t justify the product. At less than half the price of the cheapest iPad, the Kindle Fire is the clear choice for cost conscious consumers.

2. Superior Size

Coming in at three inches smaller than the iPad, the seven-inch display screen built for the Kindle Fire may seem like a downgrade but for consumers looking for a tablet to take on the go, the smaller screen is an vast improvement. The Kindle Fire is built for one hand play.

Slipping easily into a purse or pocket and at nearly half the weight, the Kindle Fire increases the overly tiny size of a smart phone without getting clunky and obtrusive like the iPad.

3. Addition of Flash

The perennial chink in the Apple armor has been Steve Jobs belief that Flash is archaic and unnecessary for Apple. So despite the cries of Apple lovers to incorporate Flash compatibility into their products, the answer has always been a resounding no.

Regardless of its usability and sustainability, Flash is a welcome addition to the Kindle Fire and one that the iPadcan’t compete with. For video lovers, the use of Flash with the Kindle Fire is a clear winner.

4. Lightening Fast Browsing

The Amazon Silk web browser was built specifically for the Kindle Fire and based off an Android operating system. To get faster web page loading times, Amazon Silk divides the work the Fire needs to do to load a page by relying on the tablet to load small stuff like text and leaving the harder tasks, such as Javascript, to Amazon’s EC2 cloud servers.

The Amazon Kindle Fire will also remember your preferred sites, storing those pre-loaded pages in your cloud for rapid loading. The browsing speeds shown at the unveiling of the Kindle Fire were second to none.

5. Free Amazon Prime Only on the Kindle Fire

Just to sweeten an already sweet deal, purchase of an Kindle Fire comes with a free 30 day subscription to Amazon Prime. Even if you don’t plan on making Amazon purchases, the Amazon Prime membership comes with online streaming access to over 11,000 movies and television shows that can be watched flawlessly on your new Kindle Fire.

Read the entire article on 5 Reasons Why Amazon Kindle Fire Is Best here

When comparing to Apple’s iPad, the above reasons are certainly worth considering if you are looking at investing in a tablet. The iPad is definitely the choice if you want your mobile device to perform more like a personal computer, need a camera, want to work with spreadsheets and more, but if you are a user who needs to browse the internet, read ebooks from the Amazon library, watch videos, use a plethora of mobile apps developed specifically for this device, then the Kindle Fire is a great choice.

Check out the Kindle Fire, Full Color 7″ Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi here.

Although the iPad is certainly a popular mobile device, consider these reasons why Amazon Kindle Fire is best.