Valuable Domain Name Company.com Reborn As Business Social Network

Domain Names, Web Development No Comments »

company.com logo Back when I began my internet aspirations in 1998 I saw the heavy wheeling and dealing at during the height of the dot-com era. When I hung my shingle on the roadside of the information superhighway, toys.com was 100x bigger than Toys R Us and Yahoo was a 130B company.

Domain names rapidly changed hands and seemingly had no limit on their valuation.

I remember coming across Company.com and seeing the unique under construction page:
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100 Job Sites To Help You Find Employment In Your Niche Industry

Online Business, Web Development 14 Comments »

job listings There are many career websites available, and tens of thousands of job listings but most people have difficulty finding a the small jobs for niche specializations. The unfortunate truth is that even in this recession, the good jobs are not on the monster.com’s and craigslist’s of the internet, but are buried in local resources and niche web properties.

We have compiled a list of the 100 top niche job websites that will let you spend more time on effective job boards and increase the chances of landing your dream job. We hope that this jobs resource helps you find meaningful employment.
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How To Increase Site Speed For Google’s Page Load Algorithm Changes

Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Web Development 5 Comments »

site speed chart Google and Matt Cutts announced that site speed is now a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm, this means you need to refine your websites and remove all unnecessary code. Clean coding is good coding, and will make your websites easier to update, maintain, and upgrade in the future.

One thing to note: Page load time is a small factor and will not be given the weight that other factors have; relevance, topicality, reputation, value-add, backlinks, keyword usage are all much more important ranking signals. Google uses over 200 elements in their search engine ranking algorithm, and page speed will affect less than 1% of all current search results.

Here are some page speed optimization tips that will help you decrease website load time.

Coding Best Practices For Fast Websites

  • Make Fewer HTTP Requests
  • Use a Content Delivery Network
  • Add an Expires Header
  • Gzip Components
  • Avoid Redirects
  • Put Stylesheets at the Top
  • Put Scripts at the Bottom
  • Avoid CSS Expression
  • Make JavaScript and CSS External
  • Reduce DNS Lookups
  • Minimize JavaScript
  • Remove Duplicate Scripts
  • Configure Entity Tags (ETags)
  • Make AJAX Cacheable
  • Remove External Third Party Scripts Such As: analytics, widgets, graphical icons, comments, social media (you can move th on your own server)

The insight behind these best practices is the fact that only 10-20% of the browser response time is spent getting the HTML document to the end user. Spend your time on the 80-90% that is hidden behind the page to make your pages noticeably faster. This is for optimizing the way servers and browsers handle that 80-90% of the user experience with advanced webpages.

For more information and further reading about site speed algorithm changes

Steve Souders’ 14 Rules for Faster-Loading Web Sites
More page load time information at seomofo
Improve the performance of your website with Google site speed
Intenseblog tips to optimize html pages for fast loading times.

67 Video Sharing Websites To Publish Your Videos

Search Engine Optimization, Web Development 9 Comments »

Video Services that can promote your online videos through SEO.

67 sites that you can use for video search engine optimization that will host and share your web videos with the web. These are specialized vertical sites for creating, discovering, searching, sharing, storing your videos.

After uploading videos, you will need to get links to the video detail page to get better placement in the search engine results pages. It usually requires 1/10 the amount of links to promote a video compared to a web page.

Video Sharing Websites

  1. BigContact social podcasting/videocasting
  2. blinkx tv / video / podcast search
  3. blip.tv video/podcasting sharing service
  4. Bolt video/photo/music sharing service
  5. Boltfolio video sharing service
  6. Brightcove professional paid video hosting and distribution
  7. BroadbandSports.com sports video portal with videos of sporting events and football matches
  8. BroadSnatch podcasts & v-log
  9. Castpost social video hosting / sharing
  10. Clipshack social video sharing
  11. Dailymotion international video sharing site with full length movies and copyrighted content
  12. DiviCast social podcasting/videocasting
  13. Dropshots social video sharing
  14. EveryBit search multimedia web content
  15. EyeSpot simple video mixing and sharing
  16. FireAnt.tv social video sharing
  17. Flukiest music/photo/video sharing
  18. Freevlog video logging tutorial
  19. GetDemocracy internet television
  20. GlideDigital social photo/music/video/file/etc sharing
  21. Grinvi social video sharing in spanish
  22. Grouper social video sharing
  23. Hulu professional videos and movies only, soon to offer a subscription service
  24. Kolablog multimedia blogging service; free
  25. LifeBlogger free blogging service
  26. Loomia podcast/video search engine
  27. Magnoto free modular blogging service
  28. MediaMax online media / file storage ; free (25 gb) and paid accounts
  29. MediaTurner rich media player service
  30. mefeedia social video sharing
  31. MetaCafe social video sharing allows movies and paid content
  32. MyVideoKaraoke social karaoke video sharing of self made music videos
  33. Openvlog video recording and sharing
  34. Orb secure access to media (music/photo/video)
  35. Ourmedia online storage
  36. Phanfare social photo / video sharing
  37. PicPix photo/video sharing/tag/organization application
  38. PiXPO video sharing service
  39. poddater video personals with tags
  40. Podesk video podcast/blog software
  41. Pooxi video search engine (french)
  42. Popcast social video broadcasting
  43. Revver social video sharing on this very popular youth oriented site
  44. SelfCastTV social video sharing
  45. SevenLoad social video sharing
  46. Sharkle social video sharing
  47. ShoZu social photo / video / text mobile sharing
  48. Stickam social media sharing
  49. Stridr / swapzies social media storage
  50. Strmz videos from TV channels
  51. Trueveo video search engine
  52. Tubemogul service to share and distribute your videos to multiple video search engines
  53. TurnHere film of the day
  54. uZood social media video sharing
  55. VideoBomb social video hosting / sharing
  56. VideoEgg video publishing
  57. VideoSift social video sharing
  58. VidiLife social video sharing
  59. Vimeo social video sharing, unlimited length uploads, easy embedding – one of our favorites
  60. vlogmap video blogs on google maps
  61. vMix social video sharing
  62. Veoh full video sharing service with professional features
  63. Vongo high-quality full screen video plugin software
  64. vSocial social video sharing
  65. woomu social video sharing with user tags and votes
  66. YouTube social video sharing, uploads limited to 10 minutes
  67. Zippyvideos social video sharing

With so many options for promoting your videos, you may be overwhelmed. If you promote your videos on the following websites you will cover 95% of the online audience.

Top 10 video sharing websites

  1. YouTube
  2. Blip
  3. Dailymotion
  4. Vimeo
  5. Metacafe
  6. Veoh
  7. Video Egg
  8. Grouper
  9. Megavideo
  10. Revver

Wireless SMS Email Addresses

Online Business, Web Development 4 Comments »

Find out the SMS email address to use to send short messages through your wireless phone carrier. All cellphones can receive text messages sent from any device including standard email.

To send an email to a mobile phone use the email address that corresponds to the users cell phone plan

Wireless email addresses

Virgin Mobile: 125 characters phone#@vmobl.com
ATT Wireless: 160 characters phone#@txt.att.net
Beyond GSM: 160 characters phone#@txt.att.net
Verizon Wireless: 160 characters phone#@vtext.com
Centennial Wireless: 160 characters phone#@cwemail.com
Cellular South: 150 characters phone#@csouth1.com
Cincinnati Bell: 50 characters phone#@gocbw.com
Boost Mobile: 140 characters phone#@myboostmobile.com
Tracphone: 140 characters Tracfone.com
Nextel: 140 characters phone#@messaging.nextel.com
Sprint: 160 characters phone#@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Tmobile: 140 characters phone#@tmomail.net
Ait Voice: 100 characters GSM:phone#@txt.att.net
CDMA:phone#@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Alltel: 140 characters phone#@message.alltel.com
Qwest: 185 characters phone#@qwestmp.com
Metro PCS: 185 characters phone#@mymetropcs.com
Cricket: 143 characters phone#mms.mycricket.com

If you are going to be texting on your cellphone, these are the short email addresses you need to give your friends. For more discount wireless phone plans, Amazon has wholesale cellphone rates available with family discount coupons.

Finding The Best Web Design Conversion Elements

Conversion Rate Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Web Development 11 Comments »

What are the best web design conversion elements to implement on your website?

I’m looking to compile a great list of conversion elements that can be included in a website. This is not for landing pages (although it could be used for them) but regular site pages, with emphasis on the homepage.

I approach every site design with conversion in mind – your design should help the visitor take desired action on your site. Keep out the fluff that will distract or alter the focus of your visitor.

Actions

  • phone call
  • completing a contact form
  • subscribing to newsletter
  • buying product
  • tweeting/sharing page with friend
  • downloading free ebook/whitepaper
  • anything that captures an email address

I am defining conversion elements as anything that will strongly persuade a visitor to remain on your site and want to learn more about you.

Conversion Elements

  • testimonials
  • 3rd party logos: BBB, truste, D&B, chamber of commerce
  • logos of good sized companies you have worked with or places you have been quoted: latimes, any inc5000, hollywood reporter etc.
  • stats showing success: client sales increases, new orders, new engagements
  • large and clear contact button – can be tastefully animated
  • photos – (founder, real staff, highly targeted to your niche)
  • short sales video
  • phone number/address

For shopping sites that sell products directly, the required elements to gain users trust are more specific. Below are elements that increase online sales in descending order of importance.

E-commerce Elements

  • product overview
  • merchant guarantee
  • availability
  • image quality
  • customer service available
  • product specific description
  • long description
  • size chart
  • toll free phone
  • ratings & reviews

The above list is from the e-tailing group/ARS ecommerce

SEO For Long Term Success – Just Because It’s New Doesn’t Mean It’s Better

Search Engine Optimization, Web Development 4 Comments »

fantomaster
Below are some good nuggets about online business building and search engine optimization from Fantomaster.

This is no “secret sauce” use common sense by giving people what they need or enjoy or even get worked up about.

If I was going to produce a course about SEO in 10 minutes a day or SEO for dummies, this is some of the basic information I would include. There is no need for cloaking as long as you are doing your job in making your website the best it can be.

The good old classic SEO rules still apply and have actually never stopped:

  • build web sites with good, useful information or content
  • make your pages light, usetight code and fast to load
  • use keywords in your title tags and text heading tags
  • use meta tags sparingly but intelligently
  • attend to usability as much for your human visitors as for the search engine spiders
  • optimize on site navigation and internal linking structure.
  • use secondary content features such as RSS, bookmarking and images

Adamantly watch your internal link structure and reduce orphan pages. Old pages should not be indiscriminately discarded.

whenever we conduct an on site link analysis of any large corporate site, there’ll always thousands, sometimes even tens of thousands of pages that are either entirely orphaned or bleeding link juice the wrong way.
In some cases we’ve detected that up to 25% of a site’s pages weren’t linked to from anywhere at all

Want users to come back to your site? Use subtle persuasion and make meaning.

publishing our SEO cartoons consistently week by week has proven a prime traffic magnet as well. Those cartoons are arguably one of the best investments we’ve ever made in terms of keeping the buzz level up.

External links are important, but only a portion of site ranking factors. The larger the website, the less effort should be spent on manual link building.

if all you can think of in terms of organic SEO is “links, links, links”, you’re missing out on about 90% of all those other possibilities and traffic conduits available

Cloaking is one of the most discussed and least understood tool of information delivery. It is one of the only ways to reliably rank for ultra competitive niches.

Tim Mayer of Yahoo! has publicly admitted that there are industries where you don’t stand a chance in hell if you don’t adopt hard core black hat SEO techniques including PPC: pills, porn, casinos. (This is not something we do, and have never engaged in cloaking)

Yahoo! or Google may roll out 800 new spiders within a couple of hours. there’s no reliable way of automating a list of spider IP addresses. “Poor man’s cloaking” such as delivery by UserAgent, free IP bot lists or JavaScript based operations are simply too risky to be worth the effort at all. Only use software that offers genuine IP delivery because there’s no other reliable approach.

An online business is very similar to a traditional brick and mortar business. There is a historical success rate of only 10%. Advice for starting a new online venture:

It’s also governed by the very same economic laws:

  • don’t spend more than you have
  • buy low, sell high
  • listen to your customers
  • watch out for your competition
  • don’t give in to smug routines

None of this has fundamentally changed because it’s the way the world of commerce (or, if you like, capitalism) works.
Some ventures may prove to be a roaring success in no time (which, incidentally, tends to happen in the “real world” as well), most all operations will have to practice relentless perseverance before turning a profit.

There’s no easy way out and no guarantees of internet success, no matter what some over hyped marketing “gurus” may claim when trying to pitch you on their overpriced stuff.

Read the full interview with Ralph Tegtmeier.

Deeplink To Any Youtube Video

Search Engines, Web Development No Comments »

Using this small string, you can link to any frame of a YouTube video. Just append a 7 character query string to the end of a YT URL and you’re done.

This is a great way to skip unnecessary content, link to more meaningful and relevant content while reducing unwanted advertisements.

Code for deeplinking to Youtube Videos:

#t=1m5s

Here is a live example of a link with the location code included

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifXRkA8Y34o#t=1m5s

10 Copywriting Tips To Improve Online Performance

Search Engine Optimization, Web Development 4 Comments »

10 Tips for Writing Powerful Website Copy

  1. Follow the 3 P’s: Preview > Proof > Post. Preview your content as it will look on your site, proof the text, then post with no errors.
  2. Use compelling headings. This makes websites easy to skim and can lure the reader deeper.
  3. Immediately answer the visitor’s first question, “Am I in the right place?” You only get 12 seconds to make a good impression.
  4. Use hooks to draw the visitor in. Action words and verbs will create interest.
  5. Carefully Create a Call to Action. Ask your visitors to perform a specific task such as signing up for a newsletter, completing a contact form, registering for a contest.
  6. Be personal and easy going. Include visitors in your website’s conversation and make them be a part of your story.
  7. Use pronouns such as you, you’re, your business. People love to read about themselves and will connect with you if they feel you care about their problems.
  8. Promote benefits not features. Benefits are about them, but features are from your website. This is repeated again: say you not we.
  9. Proofread with multiple editors. Always have more than one person review your copy.
  10. Never assume your visitor knows who you are or what you are offering. Explain in plain, clear, basic english what you sell and how it works and why they need you.

Writing good copy can be the difference of a successful website and a website that does not make money. Channel your inner wordsmith to make your online content sing and I guarantee good things will happen.

Finding Happiness During An Economic Recession

Web Development No Comments »

With the stock market down about 30% this year and many investments down 40% or more, I would like to look at positive ways to feel better and reduce life stress.

Stress from fiscal uncertainty does not need to be debilitating, and one of the best ways to overcome it is by engaging in worthy activities and helping your community.

New Happiness Research from Psychologist Martin Seligman shows us how to remain positive during an Economic Crash. Dr. Seligman is an expert on happiness and has previously studied depression and learned helplessness.

His latest research is all scientifically verified and published in the Princeton Alumni Weekly

There are three levels to happiness: pleasure, the delight you get from chocolate, fast cards, and sex; engagement, the feeling of “flow” you get when you’re doing something you’re good at; and meaning, the fulfillment you get from being engaged in an effort greater than yourself. Pleasure is ephemeral and contributes very little to real happiness… but meaningful engagement brings lasting contentment.

For classmates who are headed towards retirement, Seligman offers the following tip: “Material objects have almost no role in positive emotion. As you organize your retirement, spend it on meaningful engagement. Don’t squander your savings on boats and houses.”

It’s pretty simple, actually. Figure out what you’re good at. And then apply your strengths to a greater purpose (such as using your search engine optimization skills to help a charity or worthy cause). And don’t forget to cultivate optimism along the way.

I found this information via Tim Ferris and his post on raising money for needy schools.