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The article covers many interesting facets of media and content, but most intriguing is the study which reveals that visitors display overwhelming gravitation to engage in blog content instead of exploring products or services or -no surprise here- spending time submitting the tired oh-so-90’s “Contact Us” web form. Especially those who arrive at business websites via social media.

A Self-fulfilling Prophecy?
It’s been argued the stats are a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy and it makes sense that the majority of referral traffic via social media is to content as opposed to product and core service offering pages and submission forms. Of course it is. Social media is conversation and content. A web form isn’t content and nobody wants to converse about it. The second you tweet a message about completing a contact form for client referrals or tell followers to check out your static service offering page is the second they hit “Unfollow” and are lost to you forever. People know how to use the web. When visitors come to a web site they can figure out where to go to get that information. “Sharing” a product link with your audience is akin to actively spamming them. “But they’re following us to hear about new service offerings and product developments”. Probably not and if they are, they won’t be for long.

Whatever you share with your audience has to add value to your online relationship, or you risk being in no relationship at all. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh suggests taking an ICEE approach to social media: inspire, connect, entertain or educate. I would add one more qualifier: genuine. Genuinely have your audience’s interests at heart and make sure the message – be it a twitter tweet, a Facebook or LinkedIn update, even a blog post – is authentic. The second your followers catch the slightest whiff of “I’m another number they can sell to” – something every business should avoid at all costs – it’s over, especially online with social media and its ever-so-fickle followers. Clients and customers have been advertised at for decades, social media is different, and so better be your message.

Social media is for conversation and content. Direct sales and lead generation may be incidental to it, but should never be the goal. “Direct” should be the tip off, a warning word that smacks of direct mail marketing and direct phone sales, neither of which have anything to do with conversation or engaging content and neither of which are too effective or long lasting.

The struggle amid producing product pages vs engaging content is a clamorous one which echoes especially loud in the brief, albeit extraordinary annals of social media. It’s a common contention in many organizations; are we writers or do we make this widget? Are we video producers or do provide this service? Are we radio talk show hosts or do we sell this product? It seems the most successful and effective will do both, as Adam Ostrow perfectly illustrates by sharing a quote from Andrew Heyward (former President of CBS News) who wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “every company is a media company.”

Adam ultimately sums up beautifully in his post: “The thing to keep in mind is that while linking your audience to a blog post might not translate directly to a sale, it might translate to a blog subscription, a retweet, or a share on Facebook. And that audience – which will grow with every quality piece of content you produce — can be re-engaged down the line with news about your products or special offers that directly drive sales.”

It used to be, if customers wanted access while sipping their piping hot Pike Place at SBX, they’d shell out $4 bucks (ouch!) for just two hours (what?) of access. To many patrons (slaves?) of the twin-tailed siren, this was a bit crazy considering every other coffeehouse in town offered free Wi-Fi access. For that matter, the library, the laundromat, McDonald’s and even the local hot dog stand offered free Wi-Fi. All things considered, you have to confess that Starbucks has really nice, clean, comfortable lobbies and the aroma of fresh rich coffee vs warm hot dog water and laundry detergent can’t really compete.

Just as clear water from a faucet and power from an electrical outlet flows; today fast, ‘free,’ reliable Internet access continues down the road on its journey to commoditization. Starbucks Wi-Fi, provided by AT&T, was one of the last paid vestibules to this increasingly common amenity. Thankfully, they’ve finally done away with paid Internet access and thrown open the Wi-Fi gates at over 12,000 locations in the United States and Canada.

So people can surf lolcats and tweet their “Double ristretto venti nonfat organic chocolate brownie frappucino extra hot with foam and whipped cream upside down double blended please” order (yes that’s exactly 140 characters of caffeinated awesomeness) but it can be so much more than that.

Think outside your cubicle. This is a refreshing change of scenery and a quick step away from the many distractions and interruptions of the office environment. What’s more, think quick fix business continuity on a shoe string! What if your office Internet connection is down or mind numbingly slow? On several occasions I’ve grabbed my laptop and made a beeline to a local java shop for better access (and coffee) and was able to continue to get my work done the way I like, in a caffeine fueled frenzy. Today, many office employees and knowledge workers of all types can easily enjoy complete access to everything they need to do their job from anywhere; the only requirement is a quality Internet connection.

Free Wi-Fi for everyone!

Laptops and netbooks are lighter, faster and more powerful than ever. Cloud computing and hosted solutions abound for many enterprise and business application needs. Combine these with the ever-increasing ubiquity of free, high speed wireless access and depending on how your business is setup, you could enjoy the same smart, flexible, mobile way of working, and that’s cool beans.

*Update: I tested the free Wi-Fi while remote working from a comfy leather arm chair at my local Starbucks and am happy to report the connection and speed were both solid.

Check the terms box, click connect and you're on.

]]> http://microvisionsinc.com/blog/2010/07/perk-up-and-take-note/feed/ 0 http://microvisionsinc.com/blog/2010/06/running-windows-on-a-mac/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=running-windows-on-a-mac http://microvisionsinc.com/blog/2010/06/running-windows-on-a-mac/#comments Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:00:22 +0000 Jason http://microvisionsinc.com/blog/?p=270 Let’s get this out of the way right now, I’m a big fan of all things Apple, I love my Macs and when the time comes for a friend or relative to replace their computer, usually after their PC’s umpteenth re-infection, I unashamedly suggest they purchase a Mac. I may also drop a subtle hint about not supporting them any longer if they don’t buy Apple, but they know I’m too nice and only half mean that, sort of. But what really pushed my parents, grandparents, brothers and sister-in-laws and most all of my friends to consider a Mac is the fact that Intel-based Macs run Windows; better than most PC’s in fact, as several recent reports show.

Die hard Mac addicts consider it blasphemy, but there are plenty of reasons both personal -familiarity- and professional -custom or line of business applications which demand windows- that make a great case for running Windows on a Mac. No matter what the reason, there are two main options for running Windows and any accompanying Windows software on a Mac: using Apple’s Boot Camp or using one of the commercial virtualization options such as VMWare Fusion 3 or Parellels Desktop 5. Let’s take a look at each. Note: you will still need to own a fully licensed version of Windows.

Boot Camp – Free
Since Mac OS X 10.5, known as Leopard, Boot Camp has been a native feature. The current version of Boot Camp 3.1 allows Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 to be installed, and using this method, runs Windows and it’s applications at native speeds -meaning the operating system and applications have direct access to the hardware resources and no other software stands between them. Once setup, using Boot Camp is pretty straight forward. At startup you can select to boot into Mac OS X or Windows and from there the selected operating systems loads. Boot Camp is free and offers the best performance, but the only way to “switch” between OS X and Windows is by shutting down one OS and booting into the other; with Boot Camp it’s this or that. So while Boot Camp let’s Windows perform great, it can only run one OS at a time. If you need the ability to work with Windows and Mac applications at the same time without rebooting, then Parallels or VMWare Fusion are the “both-and” solution for you.

VMWare Fusion 3 and Parallels Desktop 5 – $80
Virtualizers bring the benefits of a Boot Camp installation (better performance) AND virtualization (you’ll be able to run Windows and Mac OS X side-by-side at the same time). The new versions of each offer the best of both worlds in that they now recognize Boot Camp Windows installations. In other words if you have a Boot Camp partition with Windows installed, VMWare Fusion 3 and Parallels Desktop 5 will recognize it and can run it in a virtual session; talk about tres chic tech. Obviously spending a little cash gives you a lot of great options. Need better performance to play a round of Team Fortress 2? Boot Camp into Windows. Going to be bouncing back-and-forth between Outlook, Office 2010 apps and Apple Keynote? Run that same installation as a virtual session while in Mac OS X.

Since purchasing my MacBook Pro two years ago, I’ve been using VMWare Fusion 2 to run Windows XP SP3 nearly every single work day at the office. While the applications I primarily run are not all that taxing (Internet Explorer 8, Office 2003 and some custom line of business applications that I use constantly) it performs great, allowing me to work seamlessly between both the Mac and Windows world. At the time I opted for VMWare’s Fusion 2 two years ago, it was simply because it happened to be on sale and offered a nice rebate for new users. I have no complaints whatsoever about VMWare Fusion but when I upgrade next time, I may give Parallels Desktop 5 a try for a while, since they are offering VMWare Fusion customers the chance to purchase Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac at a special price. Limited trials of both solutions are available if you’d like to give them a whirl.

The question to ask yourself is how do you want to work? It depends on what your needs are, but no matter which path you pick, be it installation or virtualization, one thing is clear: A Mac can run Windows just fine, as long as you don’t mind offending all the sensibilities of OS X.

Why would a business, organization, or public personality who already has a blog audience bother with Facebook? While I highly recommend blogs for the incredible content hubs they are, consider how they work. Blogs comprise a 1-to-1 relationship in that one reader can visit and consume the content you create. An individual reader may visit once in a while to see what’s happening and maybe comment on your content. On Facebook, however, fans can receive (content is pushed) blog-length posts and twitter-length status updates which can contain photos, links, and videos directly in their News Feed. You no longer have to rely on readers occasionally dropping by the blog. Content is pushed to them and they can easily comment on it. If they like, share or comment on it, your content ripples out across all of their Facebook friends (the average Facebook user has 130 friends!) as recent activity. This engenders conversation between people and their connections. Facebook is another great enticement for your fans to share and interact with your content.

The Fan Box widget is how you get a fan page out of Facebook and onto the web at large and in turn makes it easy for your blog readers to become page fans and tightens the bond you share with them.

The Fan Box has a few basic options you can select for how you would want it to display:

• With/without the stream
• With/without fans (it will display fans you know if there are any)
• With/without the Facebook logo

A few of the Facebook Fan Box Options

Now, website visitors who are not currently Facebook fans will see a “Become a Fan” button; if you are already a fan it says “You are a Fan”. No matter which Fan Box options you go for, the important thing is that Facebook users now have the option to become a fan of your page right from your website the fan box is embedded on. If gaining fans is your goal, the Facebook Fan Box is a fantastic way to do it.

Rock Fire Grille uses the Fan Box on their website to share specials and gather new fans in Facebook.

Our previous articles in The Vision indicated the top factors that help websites achieve high placement in search engines as:

Factor #1 – keyword focused anchor text in inbound links
Factor #2 – external link popularity
Factor #3 – diversity of link sources
Factor #4 – keyword use anywhere in the title tag

The final factor in this series: Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from a Trusted Domain.

If a site from a “Trusted Domain” links to your website, you are one (1) link from a trusted domain (the closest distance you can be to a trusted domain without actually being the trusted domain). It is beneficial to be as close to a trusted domain as possible.

If a site from a “Trusted Domain” links to a website that then links to your website, you are two (2) links from a trusted domain (still very close). Search engines continuously count how many links your site is from a trusted domain, and that affects your PageRank and search engine placement.

What is a Trusted Domain?

Determining what a trusted domain is represents the more complex portion of this factor. It is also one that is not completely known. In our first article in this series, we mentioned that the search engines “give hints at how their algorithms work,” but they don’t give many. The SEO community has some pieces to the puzzle, but not all of them.

The search community “generally” agrees the following characteristics apply to a trusted domain:

• A trusted domain is determined by search engine algorithms and seems to be “hand-picked” or “hard coded”
• A trusted domain designation applies to the entire domain, not a specific page on a site
• Trusted domains are generally older, high traffic sites that represent overwhelming authority or high expertise on a topic
• While a trusted domain will have a high page rank, not all sites with high page rank are trusted domains

Examples of Trusted Domains

Some examples of sites that are thought to be trusted domains include:

• Technorati, Stumbleupon, Digg
• Wikipedia, DMOZ
• Certain .gov and .edu domains
• News sites, BBC
• Big Brands

What Trusted Domains are Not

Often the definition of a trusted domain can be confused with:

• A security certificate or “locked key” icon. This is NOT what the trusted domain factor refers to.
• A trusted relationship with another domain, which allows users on one website to share services of a different website. This is NOT what the trusted domain factor refers to.

While SEO experts know a lot about search algorithms and how to achieve top placement, the trusted domain area is more vague than others. Even so, trustworthiness of your domain based on link distance from a trusted domain is the fifth most important search engine optimization factor according to the community of SEO experts.

Top Of The List LLC is an SEO firm in Grand Rapids, Michigan working with Micro Visions, a leading managed services provider. Top Of The List offers organic SEO packages which focus on all five top optimization factors, helping our clients achieve optimal search engine placement and drive increased target market traffic to their websites.

In addition to your website development or IT project with Micro Visions, you can improve your website’s visibility with our services. Contact Top Of The List at 616-460-6778 today!

Our previous articles on the Micro Visions, Inc. blog indicated the top factors that help websites achieve high placement in search engines as:

Factor #1 – keyword focused anchor text in inbound links
Factor #2 – external link popularity
Factor #3 – diversity of link sources

Today we discuss the #4 factor: keyword use anywhere in the title tag. This factor is usually one of the easiest to optimize, since it involves simple changes directly on your website.

Where the Title Tag Displays on a Web Page

While it may sound like the title tag goes at the top of your webpage, it actually goes at the top of your browser window. For example, here is a shot of Micro Visions’ home page.

The title tag appears at the top of your browser window

The title tag is emphasized in the picture below, and reads “Micro Visions Inc. – Your Objective Information Technology Advocate and Managed Services Provider”:

Emphasized title tag in the browser menu bar.

Other Locations a Title Tag is Displayed

The title tag also appears as the underlined “link” when your website places on a SERP (search engine result page). Here’s an example of a Google SERP for the term “objective information technology advocate,” which is a keyword phrase in Micro Visions’ title tag:

The searched term reveals Micro Visions at the "Top of the List" (get it?)

As you can see, Micro Visions comes up first on this term, and the searched upon term is even in bold in the title tag. Another thing to notice about the title tag displayed above is that part of it is truncated. Having longer title tags is your decision, but search engines will read up to 120 characters (including spaces) in that tag, so we tend to use as many as make sense for describing what is on that web page.

The Logic Behind Title Tag Significance in Search Results

Most website visitors who are looking for something using a search engine will click on a link that contains the same keywords they searched on. Search engine developers view this user behavior as very significant, thus, if you put targeted keywords in the title tag on your pages, it helps your site’s placement on those keywords.

More Tips When Optimizing the Title Tag

As with SEO in general, there are numerous details about every strategy, and knowing and implementing as many as possible is what makes one site place higher than another and thus be more visible online. Here are a few more of those title tag details:

• Title tags should be unique per page. Time should be spent in identifying appropriate keywords, matching landing pages, and then optimizing the title tag for those keyword phrases.
• Use appropriate keywords that describe what is on that page as well as the search terms users are querying.
• Many CMS (content management system) website programs now have methods for you to add title tags yourself. If your CMS has this capability, you can do this yourself very easily.
• The source code for a title tag is very easy, and looks like this:

< title >Put title tag contents here< / title >

On non-competitive keywords, title tag changes may result in placement without much more work, but on highly competitive keywords, the linking factors we discussed in earlier Vision articles are absolutely necessary. Combining appropriate links to optimized landing pages makes for powerful optimization.

Top Of The List LLC is a Grand Rapids search engine marketing firm working with Micro Visions, a leading information technology and managed services provider. Top Of The List offers organic SEO packages which target all five top optimization factors, helping our clients achieve optimal search engine placement and drive increased target market traffic to their websites. Learn the fifth most important search engine optimization factor in next month’s Vision, or contact Top Of The List at 616-460-6778 today if you’d like to begin optimizing your website today!

Our previous articles posted on the Micro Visions, Inc. blog indicated the top factors that help websites achieve high placement in search engines as:

Factor #1 – keyword focused anchor text in inbound links
Factor #2 – external link popularity

Today’s article focuses on the #3 factor, diversity of link sources. This means that the websites which link to your website should be from unique root domains. Like so many other areas of the search engine optimization field, there are numerous details that surround that short summary of what “diversity of link sources” and uniqueness of root domains really means.

Here are some primary details about link diversity:

• Link diversity involving the domain name itself – Sites linking to your site should be from a variety of domains. For instance, a site with 100 inbound links all from different websites is far more optimized than a site with 100 inbound links that come from a single blog. Diversify the sites that link to you!
• Diversity of the root domain type – This refers to the type of domain, such as .com, .net, .org, .edu, etc. For International sites, achieving links from other countries is important.
• The IP number – Every website is assigned an IP number, which is used in a technical way to ensure users arrive at the correct website when typing its domain name into an Internet browser. Companies that maintain the servers – called website hosts – receive a block of IP numbers, which they use to share among all the websites hosted by them. What this means to your link campaign is that websites linking to your site should be from sites that use a different website host than the one you use, else their IP number may be from the same “block” of IP numbers and not be as beneficial. For those of you who are tech savvy, here’s a free tool that will check the IP number of any website.

Almost all inbound links to your site are beneficial, so we do not recommend turning down link opportunities just because they are from non-diverse domains. However, keeping in mind this third top factor, diversity of links, can make those inbound links influence your site’s search engine placement even more.

Top Of The List LLC is an SEO firm in Grand Rapids working with Micro Visions, a leading IT and managed services provider. Top Of The List offers organic search engine optimization packages which continually focus on all 5 top optimization factors. This helps our clients achieve optimal search engine placement on highly competitive terms, and drive target market traffic to their websites like never before.

Learn the fourth most important search engine optimization factor in next month’s newsletter, or contact Top Of The List at 616-460-6778 if you’d like to begin optimizing your website today!

If you read yesterday’s article about organic search engine optimization, you’ll recall the number one factor that helps websites achieve high placement in search engines is keyword focused anchor text in inbound links. You may also see these links referred to as back-links. This article focuses on the number two factor, while each of our next three newsletters will address the remaining top factors.

According to 71% of the experts surveyed in a recent nationwide survey, the number two factor that influences search engine optimization is:

External link popularity. If you thought we could move on to something else besides those incoming links to your site, it’s time to re-think the issue. Not only is the anchor text of top importance in those links, but the quality and quantity of the inbound links to your site (called “link popularity”) is second in importance to the anchor text.

Quantity refers to “how many links” are coming into your site, so in general, the more the better. If quality and quantity were separated in this popularity factor, we personally feel quality is the clear winner. We’ve seen websites with less than 200 quality inbound links placing at the top of the list on extremely competitive queries, and farther down the list are websites with over 1,000,000 non-quality inbound links. While many factors are involved in placement, this is too large of a difference to ignore when it comes to quantity vs. quality. Some links simply do not carry as much “link juice” as other links do.

What makes a quality link? Search engine algorithms evaluate over 50 different factors about an incoming page link to determine quality, and thus how much “link juice” it will pass along to the website to which it links. Here are just a few of those factors:

• PageRank – In simple terms, PageRank is a “vote” from 0 to 10 which is assigned to every web page on the Internet. Pages linking to your site that have been assigned a higher PageRank, result in a higher quality link. This is sort of a snowball effect, since PageRank of any page is improved by all of the factors we are covering in this series of articles on SEO.
• Relevance – When the site linking to your site includes similar words and terms – meaning it is relevant that your two websites are linking – it increases the value of the link. For example, a tire dealer site that links to an automotive repair site would result in a more relevant link than if that tire dealer site linked to a day spa.
• The hierarchical page location of the inbound link on the external site – An easy way to measure this is in terms of “number of clicks” from the home page where the link resides. A link to your site from another site’s home page, or a page just one or two clicks away from the home page, is almost always more powerful than a link buried deeper into the site.

While almost all links to your site that come from external sources help your site, the popularity of the external website is the second of the top factors that can influence your site’s search engine placement on appropriate queries.

Top Of The List Search Engine Marketing, is a Grand Rapids based SEO firm working with Micro Visions Information Technology Consultants. We offer SEO packages and stand-alone link campaigns which continually focus on the number two optimization factor – obtaining popular external links. The results help clients achieve top organic search engine placement on highly competitive terms, and drive target market traffic to their websites like never before.

Be sure to check back next month to learn the third most important search engine optimization factor, or contact Top Of The List at 616-460-6778 today if you’d like to begin optimizing your website.

Read yesterday’s blog post for SEO Factor #1.

Optimizing your website so users can find it by querying appropriate search engines takes time, work, and strategy. The search engines give hints at how their algorithms work for organic search, but the real value comes from experienced search engine optimization (SEO) experts. SEO experts have numerous clients, and thus have their finger on the pulse of what is working and what is not working when it comes to achieving top search engine placement.

A recent nationwide survey conducted by SEOmoz that was sent to SEO experts revealed the top five search engine factors in achieving high placement. This article focuses on the number one factor, while each of our next articles will address the other four factors.

According to 73 percent of the experts surveyed, the number one factor that influences search engine optimization is (drum roll please):

Keyword focused anchor text from external links. Keyword focused anchor text is what the words say that form the link(s) to your website. For example, if a restaurant called “Swordfish Grill” has another site linking to it, does the user click on:

a. Swordfish Grill
b. For the best seafood in town, click here, or
c. Try Swordfish Grill, the best seafood restaurant in town!

Obviously if you were a seafood restaurant business, example c would help your site the most in search engine placement for “best seafood restaurant.”

While almost all links to your site that come from external sources help your site, obtaining links that have keywords in the anchor text is one of the top factors that can influence your site’s search engine placement for those terms.

Top Of The List Search Engine Marketing, a Grand Rapids-based firm working with Micro Visions, Inc. Information Technology Services, offers SEO packages which focus heavily on this number one optimization factor. The results help clients achieve top organic search engine placement on highly competitive terms, and drive target market traffic to their websites like never before.

Read the next article for the second most important search engine optimization factor, or contact Top Of The List at 616-460-6778 if you can’t wait to get started optimizing your website.