I’ll be recapping Jason Spero’s presentation, “The Time for Mobile is Now.” Jason Spero works with Google as the Head of Mobile Ads for the Americas. You can follow him on Twitter at @Speroman. You can also follow the hashtag #thinkmobile to catch more information filtering through from the Think Mobile event.

Google stated that 79% of the top 800 brands that advertise with Google do not have a site that is optimized for mobile.  So if you haven’t jumped on the opportunities that mobile offers yet, you definitely aren’t alone.

“It’s not too late to be early.” -Google thinkmobile

Jason Spero provided 5 great things to do in the next 90 days to improve your mobile efforts:

1. Create a mobile-specific site.

If you are thinking about a mobile strategy for your brand, most likely that means you already have a website. Whether you take a long time developing it, or simply re-purpose your website content to throw a mobile site up pretty quickly, get one up as soon as you can.  That way you can already be testing and making adjustments as you pull in more data. In time, you’ll want a mobile site that is easy to navigate, and pulls visitors in rather than frustrate them and push them away.

2. Find out how mobile impacts your business.

Whether you are a small local business, or a major brand like Best Buy, you should take a second to think, “how does mobile impact my business?” For many, comparison shopping is one major hurdle you have to overcome with your customers.  Nowadays, your customers don’t have to spend an entire day shopping around at different stores to find the best price.  Anyone with access to the internet on their phone could just do a quick search and find the product cheaper somewhere else, and either buy it right there on their phone or make the trip to the local store with the best price.  Best Buy has trained their employees to handle this with price matching. Find ways that mobile could be impacting your business, and plan for it.

3. Get personal.

A mobile phone is one of the most personalized items a person can own.  You can choose the style, the plan, your background, apps, ringtones, etc. Phones are almost always within arm’s reach, and we typically don’t share them with others.  When developing your mobile strategy, be sure to think about this personal aspect of our phones. Adidas did a great job with running an ad campaign on a more personal level.  It involved allowing high school basketball players to click-to-call from their phone to leave voice messages for their favorite professional basketball players.  Kevin Garnett received about 33,000 messages, and 18% of the people calling dialed in more than once.  What they discovered is that a few people were calling everyday after practice, to let the pro players know how their practice went, and also things like how that player inspires him or her.  This campaign worked well because it was based around click-to-call actions; these players called on their way home from practice; many would not have waited until they got home to go on the computer, and then take action.

4. Track mobile independently.

Once you launch your mobile efforts, be sure to track mobile traffic and activity just like you would any other traffic source.  Tracking mobile activity independently will help you make faster, more informed decisions to make adjustments on your mobile site.

Match.com launched their site a while back, and began tracking. At the time of the launch, the registration process was not set up very well, resulting in very few mobile registrants.  In January 2011, 2% of the registrations occurred on mobile, while in January 2011 they rose to 8% of total registrations.  In a few years, Match.com says mobile will most likely be the main source for registrants.  By tracking activity on mobile separately, you will be able to make site adjustments, and see how it impacts performance.

5. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

If you don’t get it right at first, no worries. Track and keep at it, you’ll be constantly working towards the best possible experience for your mobile users.  Be sure to get your app out there and track and refine when you know.  Pay attention to how your customer responds and adjust as needed.

Even if you haven’t taken advantage of dramatic mobile growth, it’s not too late.  In fact, even if you feel like you’re late to the game, you are really still pretty early to start putting together a strategy specific to mobile.

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• Page Headlines and Ad Copy
• Clear and Concise Headlines
• Impeccable Grammar
• Taking Advantage of Trust Indicators
• Using a Strong Call to Action
• Buttons and Calls to Action Should Stand Out
• Go Easy on the Links
• Use Relevant Images and Videos
• Keep it Above the Fold
• Always be Testing

Click image for larger view.

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Using the free version of WordPress will allow you to perfect your writing style and also get you into the habit of blogging on a regular basis.

But if the blogging bug gets you and you want to monetize your blog and customize its look, you’re severely limited using the free WordPress.com version. Any advertising that might appear on your free WordPress blog is placed by WordPress themselves, so you won’t make any money, WordPress will.

And while they have hundreds of free themes to choose from, your selection is limited. You’re not able to add plugins (such as those for SEO or social bookmarking) and you have to purchase a yearly Custom CSS Upgrade if you want to change any of the coding of your chosen theme.

Making the Move

But all is not lost if you’ve started your blogging career using WordPress.com! If you’ve written some great articles and if you’ve gotten relevant comments and have some regular readers, you’ll want to keep that content and move it to your self-hosted blog.

The content will help you gain search engine traffic to your new blog (and your own domain) if you’ve used your keywords properly and the number of comments will show new readers that you have a following and that you know your stuff.

If you decide to move your free blog to WordPress.org, here are the first things you’ll need to do:

1. Purchase a domain name and hosting account. I recommend BlueHost, here’s why.
2. Install WordPress to your hosting account.

Now, log in to your Dashboard of your free WordPress.com blog. Scroll down the page and click on Tools – Export in the left column.

Do you want to export ALL your content? Only certain authors? Only certain dates? This next screen is where you can choose these options from the drop down boxes. Then click the Download Export File button.

Save the file so you can find it easily. I like to keep it on my desktop so I don’t have to search through a million folders when I need it.

Log in to your self-hosted WordPress dashboard and scroll down to find the Tools – Import link.

Choose WordPress at the bottom of the list.

Locate the xml file that you just EXPORTED and click the Upload File and Import button.

Now you can assign a new author for these posts, if you want. They can be linked to your current user name, another author’s user name, or you can create a new user name just for these posts. If you have photos attached to any of these imported posts, be sure to check the box that says Import Attachments. Otherwise the photos will NOT import.

And the last box you’ll see is the status box where you should see that the files were imported successfully.

If you have problems importing your files, check with your web host to see if they can do this for you. Sometimes, depending on how many files you have to import, you might exceed maximum file size limits. There’s no need to give up; simply check if they can import the files for you or if they can temporarily lift the maximum limit.

Honestly, it will take you longer to read this post about moving your content than it will take you to actually complete all the steps. Moving your content to a self-hosted WordPress blog is easy and will prevent you from losing valuable content. There’s really no need to reinvent the wheel when moving from a free blog to a self-hosted blog.

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SEO can be a complex task that involves several essentials to get the best search engine rankings. However, there are some webmasters who are misinformed of various techniques and facts about SEO and its power to increase website visibility on the SERPs.

Consider the following SEO myths and their corresponding facts:

Myth 1: Search engine optimization is the only means of promoting websites

SEO is merely a portion of the SEM (search engine marketing), a form of Web marketing for promoting websites in the SERPs. The other SEM processes include paid inclusion, contextual advertising, and paid placement.

Myth 2: SEO is an activity that is done just once.

It is rather a continuing process, as you struggle with keeping your site high up the rankings that change almost every time.

Myth 3: PPCs damage your ranking.

Pay Per Click is a form of paid placement SEM that has neither negative nor positive influence on a website’s actual ranking. While some believe that you can only choose either a paid or unpaid method to promote your site, you can actually do both.

Myth 4: SEO service providers assure high site rankings.

This is not always the case. There are even those that can hurt your site and may damage its reputation. Thus, choosing the right SEO company/companies to work for you is essential.

Myth 5: Having high ranking is everything.

While getting high ranks is good, without high conversion rates, your site’s revenue generation capability would still be shaky. Without buyers, clients, or subscribers, the huge traffic that your site makes is basically useless.

Also, do not mistake PR (PageRank) with search engine rankings, as they are two different factors of determining a site’s value.

Myth 6: Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or having white text on a white background to hide keywords improves ranking.

For a short period, this method might work. However, once search engines detect it, your site might get penalized.

Myth 7: There are techniques in SEO that can improve site rankings faster.

For reasons that are apparent, the search engine algorithms are complex by nature and are zealously guarded by the companies that made them. No one can crack them. Moreover, search engines algorithm take into account myriad factors and the processes they use change continuously.

No one can predict the preferences of search engines, hence there are no fixed and reliable SEO techniques that can “magically” boost online rankings.

Myth 8: The use of meta tags can help your site ranking.

The purpose of meta tags is to provide details to a search engine about the contents of your site. It does not make your rank better.

Myth 9: Usage of image links for SEO.

While text links can do well for your site, image links are not suggested as crawlers cannot read image texts. However, if you include the ALT attribute or ALT tag to an image, they can read them and can then contribute to your site ranking.

Myth 10: You need to submit your site to directories and search engines.

The search engines can actually find your site, whether you submit it or not.

By separating SEO facts and fallacies and practicing good optimization, it should not be long before your site garners higher rankings in search engine result pages.

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My motives were both business and personal. When I hear people talking abut link building software, they almost always focus on the time such software saves. What they don’t talk about as much is the impact (or lack of) it has on either click traffic or search rank.  Over the years I have probably tested and used over 100 different programs that in one way or another assisted with some aspect of the link building process. Many are long gone. Some are wonderful and incredibly powerful, others should be taken off the market. 

The reason so many link building tools and programs exist is because of the gold rush mentality many link builders have. Anyone can create some type of linking related software, slap it on the web, and sell it.  My hunch is that 95% of all linking related software programs, whether client based or in the cloud, are useless.  In fact, it was becasue they were all so useless that I ended up creating my own.

“My hunch is 95% of all linking related software programs, whether client based or in the cloud, are useless”

Link Building Software – What to Avoid
First, if the software gives you an option to send email automatically to a supposed link target site, run for your life.  This part of the link building process can never be automated and implemented correctly.  This is not to say all automation during the link building process is bad, but rather that there are certain aspects of the process that should never be automated, and email is at the top of that list.

Second, any software that uses Google’s Pagerank as a key part of their process is doomed.  I could write 500 pages about why, so you’ll have to trust me here.  Letting Pagerank dictate your linking strategy is foolish, and any software that gives you any other impression is trying to scare you.  Pagerank is a very useful metric, in certain ways and in certain situations, but I would never pursue a link target because of it’s Pagerank, and I’ve sought links from hundreds of sites that had none.

Third, if the software queries a search engine that no linger exists, you might be suspicious.  I’m not kidding. At least two programs that help identify link targets include search engines that no longer exist.

Fourth, just because some link building software provides a module for creating and managing a links directory does not mean you should implement one, or use that software to manage it.  If you want to hear a few horror stories about why, contact me privately. 

Link Building Software – What to Seek
This one is so obvious most people overlook it.  What company created the software? Do they have a good reputation? Do they have a successful history you can research.  Do they provide names of people who work at the company? Are they trying to be a one trick pony and claim expertise in link building when they have never actually done any link building themselves?  And just because a tool ranks well for the term link building software does not mean that software will be effective.  I remember several link building software programs that stamped a sitewide link on every page of the auto-generated directory pages they created.  Once upon a time sitewides were thought by some to be clever.  Now, siteswides are largely devalued.

I’ll close with a more philosophical question.  Most people agree that publicity, links, and awareness within the right vertical are the key to success for any web site.  Links play a role in nearly every type of online marketing activity, from a plain vanilla links page to a Twitter tweet.  At the same time, at the end of these billions of links is a mouse poised to click, and a person is holding it. A Person.  The web is about people and passion and interests and curiosity and having a voice if you want one.  People.

Do you really want to put the most important part of your online strategy in the hands of something created by someone you don’t know, and who doesn’t know your business?

Link Building Software – Who Does It Right
If I you are in charge of link building, research and pick from these tools. Consider using more than one.

Link Insight (disclaimer – I am co-creator)
Buzzstream
Ontolo
Open Site Explorer/Linkscape
Majestic
SEO Book
Raven

Link well!

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We often forget that no every speaks, or reads, English. The US, Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland and Guyana are the only areas that speak English as the main language. There is a handful of other countries that speak English, but not as their primary language. Then there is everyone else.¹ There are billions of people who don’t read English, yet few blogs offer translation options on their site.

To easily translate your blog from one language to anther you can add a Google Translate menu to your site and let Google handle the translations on the fly. They may not be perfect, but they are better than having none.

I like the Google Translate option as it’s easy to install and doesn’t cause any duplicate content issues. Plus it will work on any blog or website.

Another option is the Global Translator WordPress plugin. This one adds flags into your sidebar and creates sub-directories for all the translated content. All these sub-directories are then indexable creating a lot of additional pages on your site. They are duplicate content, yet in different languages, so I guess it’s up to the search engines to figure out how to handle that.

No matter how you do it, offering up your content in different languages opens up your site to a larger audience.

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Although the field of SEO is probably one of the most open when it comes to giving out tips on rankings, there is often so much contradictory information out there that you will see people trying to settle small differences of opinion with links to various forum posts.

What kind of advice should the amateur (or up and coming) SEO practitioner look for in the world of Search Engine Optimization?  Here are a couple that might

• Someone Already Tried That Trick. In many cases we work with clients who try to do something that was already discovered (and filtered) by search engines a long time ago. For instance, people seem to come up with “tiny text that blends into the background” on a frequent basis without being prompted. It is always good to see people thinking logically and creatively, but it pays to run your idea by someone who has been around the block a few times.

• SEO Jobs are often given to those who don’t know much about SEO. We often see webmasters arguing that the site has “great SEO” because they added 500 phrases to the meta keywords tag. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, or seek out a second opinion. When in doubt, it pays to get a little self-education to see which “expert” is the most up to date.

• The Landscape Changes All The Time. Although this can be said for many technological fields, SEO is probably a lot more dynamic than programming or product development trades. This is because optimizers have to react to today’s update in Google or Bing, while keeping an eye out for the next search engine or social media trend. The best SEO consultant might be one that tells you to scrap the project he recommended to you yesterday because Google changed its mind!

• You Have To Become An SEO Historian. A programmer does not have to know anything about Charles Babbage or Blaise Pascal to build code for your site, but an SEO expert should have an advanced knowledge of yesterday’s SEO. This is especially true because there have been so many “black hat” tricks used in the past that your current SEO project needs to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. (If you’re in the Gray Hat realm, you also need to know the appearance is avoided while the impropriety moves forward.) Many innocent techniques could get mistaken for Cloaking, Keyword Stuffing, Hidden Text, Duplicate Content, Doorway Pages, and Link Buying. If your SEO expert is unaware of these outdated tricks, your site may be traveling through an optimization minefield.

• You Don’t Need Experience To Get Started. Even though the above tips counsel the use of an expert, you can still begin your SEO project by yourself with minimal SEO knowledge. There is no substitute for experiencing optimization firsthand, and many of our best clients would make for above average optimizers in their own right. Knowledge of how search engines work, and what they are looking for, can guide you in DIY SEO processes, and help you find a consultant who can take your site to the next level. Until that point, you can begin sprucing up your site (carefully!) and see how the search engines react to better titles, upgraded content, and readable code.

Everyone in the SEO field started somewhere, and is usually guided by their initial experiences. People who have been around long enough may have used techniques that were perfectly acceptable (or very successful!) for a time before they fell into the “black hat” category. The more agile SEO experts have moved toward standard best practices that include turning the site into a resource and creating linking campaigns that fall within the realm of acceptability for Google and Bing. The difference for seasoned experts usually involves more involvement in the SEO community when it comes to discussion and information sharing, plus a continuous educational process. Unlike most other specialties, the need for constant learning in optimization can be the difference between success and failure whether you are looking to improve your own site’s rankings or get a job in SEO. While there may be more challenges and knowledge needed before you can consider yourself a true “SEO Expert” there are also a great deal of opportunities for people who can prove themselves on Google’s playing field, and plunging head-first into search engine optimization is the best way to start.

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Dave’s Answer:

This isn’t true, and I don’t know why people think it’s a risk. Google has a ton of smart engineers: do you think they’d have a popular product like Google Analytics (which I run on this site) be something that could be exploited by hackers? I sure don’t.

But to clarify, I asked my friend Bennett Haselton to share his thoughts on this matter. Bennett writes for the programmer/geek site Slashdot, among others, and has a good handle on how people who break into sites exploit weaknesses. Here’s what he said:

Your friend, or his web team, is in the twilight zone or something. It’s not even theoretically possible for Google Analytics to provide a “doorway” to hackers.

When you add Google Analytics code to your website, your webserver just sees that as normal “content” — just a sequence of bytes, like an image or a video file or a text file — and when the user requests it, the webserver sends it to them, just as the webserver sends other content like images and videos. Thus it’s not possible for adding Google Analytics to enable anyone to “hack” your site, because from the point of view of the webserver, it’s just normal content that it sends to the user.

What follows is how I would summarize it for a non-techie audience, although only a non-techie can tell if the explanation is any good

What happens when someone goes to your website, if you have a Google Analytics tag on your page:

1. The user loads your page
2. The user’s web browser sees that you have a tag on your page. This tag is basically a set of instructions that tells the user’s browser to request some content from the Google Analytics server.
3. The user’s computer requests that content from the Google Analytics server.
4. At the end of the month, you as the webmaster, can go to the Google Analytics page and log in to your Google Analytics account, to see how many times a user loaded the content that was requested in step #3. That way Google can tell you how many times the content was loaded, what countries it was loaded from, etc. That’s what Google Analytics does.

Note that in these four steps, there is never a point where any “instructions” (code) are actually run *on* your webserver. After step #1, your webserver is out of the loop entirely. The Google Analytics code is a set of instructions on your webpage, but those instructions (which say “Go and fetch some content from Google’s servers”) are instructions that are followed by your web browser. The Google Analytics code doesn’t tell your webserver to “do” anything.

The only time installing third-party programs onto your website could expose your website to security attacks, would be in the case of programs like WordPress, because WordPress consists of code (instructions) that is actually run *by the webserver*. If the authors of WordPress have programmed it carefully, the code won’t do anything harmful, but sometimes attackers will find ways to exploit it and cause it to do harmful things. In that case you always have to make sure you have the latest WordPress fixes installed.

The distinction between *code* and *content* can help simplify things without having to spend years learning about computer security. It’s what makes it intuitive to see why installing Google Analytics (or an image or a video file) cannot enable anyone to “break into” your website, but installing WordPress could (sometimes) enable a break-in.

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Try it for yourself on this link to see what I mean: It’s Mothering Sunday today in the UK. You should see a discreet popup with content from Wikipedia’s entry.

Feedback I get about this feature is uniformly positive. Most people say they like the elegance of the popups presenting information that’s complementary to what they’re engaged with right now on the site. It’s not the main content so they can quickly review it, dismiss it and get on with what’s caught their prime interest. They also like that the popups appear only when you click a link rather than that really irritating way of others that pop up as soon as you move your mouse over a link.

Following some months of beta testing, Apture have rolled out version 2 of their overall service to beta testers. Among the new features is a nifty customisable toolbar that’s invisible by default when you first land here and which you see at the top of your browser screen when you start scrolling down the page.

Apture’s participating at the South by Southwest Interactive event in Austin, Texas, this weekend, and there they just announced the toolbar’s general availability. They’re calling it “the Magic Search Bar.”

Usually, I’m not a big fan of toolbars that appear on websites when you visit, finding few of much redeeming value. Indeed, the first version of Apture’s toolbar during early beta testing didn’t appeal to me at all. It popped up at the bottom of the screen and was always-on by default. Pretty irritating, I thought.

The one you see now, though, is much better in terms of how and when it appears at the top of the screen, and better reflecting Apture’s overall discretion in how popup functionality works on a site (in my case, handled via a clever WordPress plugin).

It also has functionality that I’m sure many people will find useful, like the search box (which you can use to search the whole web or just this site) and share links for Facebook, Twitter and email.

So I like it and plan to post some thoughts once I’ve seen what it can do over time. What do you think of it?

And there’s more coming soon, says Apture in an email about the new features:

[…] We are putting the finishing touches on a full statistics platform for you to see what topics your readers are searching for, how many shares each of your articles are receiving and much more. Keep your eyes peeled to your inbox.

If you want to provide some useful functionality to the readers of your blog, whatever self-hosted platform you use, sign up for Apture. It’s free.

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For that, the best option is setting yourself up with a self-hosted WordPress blog.

While there’s nothing wrong per se with free blogging options like Blogger or WordPress (the .com version; self-hosted WordPress is on the .org domain), they severely limit how much interaction you have with them from a user perspective. Designs are limited as well, and add-ons aren’t supported, and to make a truly effective social media hub on your blog, you need fluidity to design.

The worst thing about free blogging options is that you’re also placing all your content into the hands of a third-party. If Blogger, WordPress or any other free blogging platforms change their Terms and Conditions, you could find yourself without a blog. With a self-hosted option, all the control lies in your hands. While there are other options like TypePad and Squarespace, I just prefer WordPress for its ease-of-use and community support.

Going Self-Hosted

Just in case you aren’t already using self-hosted WordPress, here’s a quick guide to getting set up :

• Choose a domain name and a web host to host your blog. Bluehost is perfect for this, since it offers packages that set up the domain and hosting as an all-in-one package. There are several others, so Google “web host” and find the one right for you.
• Once you have your account, you’ll be taken to an area called C-panel. This is simply the Admin dashboard for all the backroom stuff associated with your site. Once in there, its simply a matter of using Fantastico to set up your WordPress account, as shown by my friend  John Haydon’s video.

Planting the Seeds

The reasons for using a self-hosted WordPress blog are numerous, but the main two (at least as far as a social media hub is concerned) are design and add-on flexibility. Since the hub is going to be both your home-base and outpost, you need a platform that can handle your needs – WordPress is perfect for this.

The look and feel of your hub will define how useful it is to your visitors. The less cluttered the look, the more effective the hub can be, although some folks prefer a more information-led design. This is where WordPress and a premium theme comes into play (a theme is just a pre-designed look or framework for your blog) -  you can choose a template, page, sub-pages, sub-domain or any number of design options to present your hub.

There are benefits to each option:

• A page holds everything in one area, although it could get cluttered.
• Sub-pages allow you to set up different niche hubs (more on that tomorrow).
• Sub-domains offer a completely separate hub altogether, but still tied to your blog’s main domain.
• Templates allow a different look and feel from your blog design, and help give that unique hub feel.

What you choose will mostly be determined by how many resources you populate your hub with. How you populate these resources is up to you; again, the great thing with self-hosted WordPress is that the flexibility of design is limitless, thanks to plug-ins.

Social Media Plug-Ins for Your Hub

WordPress is an open-source community, which means that there is a whole community of developers making really cool applications (or plug-ins) every day. These are released to the WordPress userbase (almost always free of charge) and you can then use them on your blog to help turn it into anything you like.

Some of the best ones for a social media hub (and ones that I’ll show you examples of in the design post coming next in the series) include:

• Enthropia’s Lifestream. One of the ways to show what you’re up to on different networks is Lifestreaming, and Enthropia’s plug-in for WordPress is one of the simplest. This is perfect for those that don’t want a full-on social media hub.
• Twitter Tools. Offers great integration between Twitter and your blog and vice versa, including tweet archives, posts, admin options and more.
• Smart YouTube. Ideal for video bloggers, this gives you a larger set of options than just video embedding – playlists, RSS feed support and iPhone compatibility being just a few.
• FotoBook. While there are plug-ins and widgets to integrate your blog with Facebook, one of the coolest to do this in reverse is FotoBook. This imports all your pictures from Facebook and enhances the personal aspect of your social media hub.

These are just some plug-ins that, along with your design and the existing applications from the various social networks, will make up your social media hub. The great thing with WordPress is that, no matter what you’re looking to do via your hub, you can probably find a plug-in for it. Just go to WordPress Extend and start searching – that’s where the treasure is to shape your hub, your way.

Takeaway: Make a list of how many features you’d like on your blog. Decide if you want to go for a single page, sub-pages, sub-domain and how intensive or lite you wish your hub to be. Sketch some ideas for layout, since tomorrow we’ll look at the various options available, with examples of each to a successful hub.

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