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Posts Tagged ‘click’

It was in March that Google had updated its mobile search image just for the sake of iPhone and Android gadgets. But now the good news is that they have rolled out images updated image search to other additional phones as well in about 38 languages. The update will include both larger thumbnail images as well as search filters.

To search images, click “images” that will take you to Google image search page in place of the page where the actual image is hosted.

To view Google image on your handset, you need to start with Google.com in the mobile browser and select “Images”. A number of pictures will appear, select your desired image.

-phones/6893/”>Google announces Updated Image Search to Additional Phones

Let’s take the time machine way back to the good ol’ days. There once was a time when people waited. It was a magical time when folks stopped to talk on the street and books were as thick as five stacked laptops. And would you believe that we had attention spans back then? I know, it is almost unfathomable. But that is how it was. They were good times.

Back to the present day. That mythical past is now just the stuff of legend. The stuff we will tell our kids about. This next part might come as a shock, but remember those things called attention spans? Gone. Extinct. Snuffed out. We simply cannot afford them. There are far too many things to do, and if we have to spend real time doing them, well then maybe they are just not worth it.

Alright, I exaggerate a bit. But as you will see, it is for good reason. In this world of search engine optimization, there is a direct relationship between attention spans and successful websites. Put simply, the less time it takes for customers to figure out your website, the more likely you are to get the sale. Take lots of time getting to the point and your potential customers are gone.

Let’s break down that concept further. Here is a list of things that will send your site viewers packing in no time:

1.  Your site takes too long to load

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. You go to buy a product knowing that a few sites sell it. It really does not matter who you buy it from, you just want it done. The first site you visit takes 30 seconds to load but you were gone at 10. The next site loads fine except for the product images. You exit, wondering what good a site is that can’t display the product images. You end up buying at a site that loads in a few seconds, images and all.

What you say? That first site was yours? Big bummer.

2.  You do not have a clear call to action

What exactly do you want your viewers to do? Click on one of the hundred links in your sidebar? Read some more about your product? Visit your mother’s blog? Or do you want them to BUY? A clear call to action tells your viewer, “What you are looking for is right here behind this button – click it, click it, click it!” Sure there are other things you want them to know, but forget about those for now. Your call to action should punch them in the face (figuratively).

3.  Your important stuff is hidden in a mess of text or in some obscure location

What good is a killer call to action if they can’t find it? What good is your ‘offer to beat all offers’ if they have to scroll down 3 miles just to see it? Keep the good stuff above the fold* so they see it right when the page loads. If you send your viewers on an Easter egg hunt, they will be through with you.

4.  Your viewers have no idea what you are talking about

Let’s say you are trying to win over new customers with your site. Are you chasing them away with industry jargon? If you have got this fabulous new product that you are trying to break out of its niche, are you explaining it in terms everyone will understand? The second a viewer runs into stuff they know they don’t understand, you have lost them.

5.  Your checkout process takes longer than your viewer’s lunch break

Congratulations. They love your product and want to buy it. What have you done to make it easy on them? Is it as simple as throwing it in the cart and purchasing? Or do they have to wander through a maze of shipping addresses, billing addresses, additional offers, products they might like, and waivers? If you can’t shave it down to a few simple steps, your competitor sure can.

No terribly complicated stuff here, but allow me to make an observation about it. Very few businesses get around to making changes based on the list above. It is not that they don’t get the Marketing 101 principles. It is more likely they have a love affair with their site. It may not be the prettiest or smartest thing out there, but it is theirs by golly, and they are sticking with it. They invested time and money, and they really grew to like it along the way. I get that, and those people are not going to change on my account. So this is for the other group. The ones who are ready to make their site pretty and smart.

So there you have it folks. Now that we have adjusted to the change from the old ways to this new, flighty society, it is time to give our websites the attention they need. A few tweaks to make it more A.D.D. friendly and you will have a winner.

A couple of days ago we reported the launch of Google Caffeine sandbox and about Google urging webmasters and power searchers to give their feedback on their new test index. The good news is that Matt McGee of Search Engine Land lets us know about two tools that allow webmasters or searchers compare results between the regular Google index and Google Caffeine.

Here are the two tools:

• Facesaerch Caffeine Compare: This tool from the makers of the facesaerch image search engine allows you to see both “old Google” results and Caffeine results side-by-side in frames. Below is a screenshot:
• The tool is easy to use as you do not require to click back and forth between two browser tabs or windows!
• Google Caffeine Bookmarklet: This is a browser bookmarklet, released yesterday only on The Google Tutor blog . It works as: do a search on Google.com, then click the Google Caffeine bookmarklet in your browser and it will automatically run the same search in the Caffeine sandbox!

With these available tools, Google seems to get much reviews on its new search index or what it has been hoping for!

Conducting keyword research can be a bit of a challenge if you aren’t using the right tools. When you conduct a search for “keyword research tools,” you’ll come across so many choices it can be hard to choose just one. So what are some strong keyword research tools available today? I’ve come across a few that seem to be effective.

Aaah, Google AdWords. This is probably one of the more popular tools out there, and all of you SEO experts are familiar with how it works, or at least should be. So what other tools are useful for keyword research?

Let’s take a look at a few.

Google’s SK tool works really well for generating niche keyword ideas. When you get to the SK tool page, click on the link, “Or see top keywords across all categories.”

Now it will display a list of categories for this search. From there, you can search through a various categories such as health, food, computers, travel & tourism, and more.

Let’s click on Sports & Fitness. Now, if I click on the Boating & Water Recreation, it will pull up a list of ideas and corresponding monthly search volume.

From here, you can find some great ideas for niche marketing. This tool can be useful for finding long-tail keyword ideas as well. To do this, simply do a search for a keyword (such as ski boats) and it will generate a list of long-tail keyword suggestions.

Additional Free tools for keyword research include:

• Wordtracker – Can help you compile associated keywords.  A more robust, paid version is also available.
• Keyword Discovery – Free version of the keyword research tool from Trellian.
• Spacky.com- Generates a monthly search volume for a given keyword.
• Seo Book Keyword Research- As stated on their site, “The Coolest Keyword Research Tool Today!”
• Keyword Spy- A site that allows you to spy on your competition and find their keywords.

Paid Subscription Tools

If you’re looking for added features, some good tools to check out:

• Spyfu.com- This is a great way to spy on the competition. They provide a Keyword Smart Search generates keyword ideas based on what the competition is doing. You can use some of their basic tools by creating an account, but in order to get the most out of it, you have to subscribe for a membership. 
• KeyCompete.com- KeyCompete is a keyword research tool that recognizes the keywords your competitors use in their pay-per-click campaigns and also reveals the competition that is bidding on your keywords.
• Wordze.com- Facilitates finding niche markets and locates market growth.
• Adgooroo.com- Helps you to get more traffic by finding traffic opportunities, PPC monitoring, and more.
• Nichebot.com- According to their ad, it’s “keyword research on steroids.”

The best tool that I am utilizing is Market Samurai. This tool is amazing! Really. I’ve been using it for the past month or so, and it makes keyword research so simple. In addition to keyword research, it provides tools like a rank tracker, finding content, and analyzing the competition. If you don’t want to pay for it right away you can download a free trial version for 12 days.

Have you found other tools useful when conducting keyword research? If so, I would love to hear about them.

Google has recently rolled out a new feature called Bid Simulator for AdWords in an aim to show advertisers the potential impact of a bid on their advertising results, thereby ensuring a better understanding of the costs and click-through volumes.

Even though, Bid Simulator cannot predict the future or estimate the future results accurately, it can help with analysis of the data from the past seven days. It allows advertisers to examine what could have happened if they had taken different keyword-level bids. With the help of the historical data of the previous week, the Bid Simulator re-calculates the number of impressions for which an ad could have shown if the advertiser would have chosen a different maximum CPC or a higher bid, how many clicks that the ad could have received for those impressions and how much those clicks could have cost!

It seems Bid Simulator would help advertisers make better and more informed decisions when it comes to determining which keywords to change spend on. To use Bid Simulator, advertisers need to navigate to the “keywords” tab in their AdWords account and then click the bid simulator icon in the Max. CPC column next to the current bid of any keyword. This will list bids above and below current maximum CPC and list the estimated number of clicks and cost. By clicking the relevant radio button advertisers can change their maximum CPC rate up or down and save results!

Here is a screenshot:

If you are a Bing fan as well as good at composing jingles, then participate in the “Bing Jingle Contest.” The Bing team is organsing this contest to see interesting music about Bing. The primary aim of this contest is to videotape yourself performing an original “jingle” that you’ve written, describing the attributes of the Microsoft search engine, Bing.

Here’s an introductory video.

The last date to submit your video entry is on 31 July, 2009, and winner will be announced on 5 August. The winner will be picked based on number of views and quality ratings they get on their video. They will be rewarded with a $500 American Express gift cheque.

To know more about the competition click here.

A few months ago, Yahoo! had revamped its Image Search preview. In addition, Yahoo! announced a refinement to its Image Search service – Travel Image Refiner. The new travel image refiner act as a virtual navigator that allows users to explore their popular points of interest by giving more contextual information about destinations.

It is actually a simple enhancement to its search filter. For instance, if you’re planning to visit Rome. The new travel image refiner will show all popular destinations located in Rome such as the Colosseum, Pantheon and Trevi Fountain. The moment you click on the Pantheon tab, an overlay image gets displayed. It allows you to virtually tour image results without leaving your original search results page.

The travel image refiner also helps you find out more about a place you’ve heard about. Currently, the Yahoo! Image Search is available for location specific searches and planning to expand this capability to other types of image searches as well.

The Google Mobile Blog recently reported the launch of “Search with My Location” for iPhone 3.0. With the help of this feature, iPhone users will be able to locate specific location without inserting the exact place where they are. It automatically identifies the location of a user, and gives names of restaurants, bars or other establishments when using generic terms.

For instance, when you search for “jazz” clubs, it will display all the jazz clubs near the user’s location. At present, this feature is only available for U.K and U.S iPhone users.

In order to use this feature, visit www.google.com from your iPhone’s Safari browser and click on the “My Location” link. To update the screen, just point to the “update” link and it will display your location on the homepage.

Google also promises not to use a user’s location in search to protect privacy of users. If you want to disable this feature just select the “Preferences”option given below the Google mobile homepage.

Microsoft Word and other word processing programs auto format punctuation. Unfortunately, punctuation that has been modified by word processing programs is not converted in the same way by the programs running the search engines.

For example, word processing programs will turn:

•    straight apostrophes, commas, and quotation marks into curved ones;
•    a short hypen – is converted into a longer hyphen – ;
•    ordinals such as in 1st become 1st ; and
•    fractions written as 1/2 become ½.

The simple solution prior to uploading formatted text onto a webpage is to strip out all the formatting or remove the formatting before the copy is typed. In Microsoft Word all the copywriter has to do is go into Tools and click on AutoCorrect Options. Next, click on the AutoFormat tab and uncheck the boxes beside the words:

•    “Straight quotes” with “smart quotes”
•    Ordinals (1st) with superscript
•    Fractions 1/2 with fraction character ½
•    Hyphens – with dash –

Flash and other distractions

As more and more websites fight for attention the temptation is to give the Home Page the full movie treatment and bombard the visitor with flashing images, scrolling text as on Sky News and numerous other creative combinations and sales messages. It may be a cliché but the old expression that less is more is becoming more and more true today.

Once you have attracted a visitor to your site courtesy of a search engine or through some other means, the next plan should be to lure them deeper into the site by following internal links. Sites that are overloaded with information and are slow to load can lose visitors as fast as they attracted them.

It is also important to bear in mind the age and types of people that are going to be coming to your Home Page. Many older people regard the Internet as a resource and just want the information to be relayed in as simple a way as possible, whereas young people are more used to being bombarded with messages and images.

Every website is a sales tool and the old KISS adage still holds true today: keep it simple Sam.

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The danger from automatically formatted text