WebProNews

Google, Yahoo Quietly Develop Social Networks
By WebProNews Staff · July 9, 2007 · 1

So Google’s Orkut hasn’t taken off where it counts and the company missed its chance to buy MySpace for the half the price News Corp. paid for it. And Yahoo couldn’t get Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg out of bed long enough to negotiate a successful buyout. Must be why both of them are working on new social networks on their own, on the sly.

SAP Admits To Inappropriate Downloads
By WebProNews Staff · July 5, 2007

SAP subsidiary TommorowNow is in trouble. A lot of it. In a late-night announcement, seemingly designed to be lost among the boom of Independence Day fireworks, SAP admitted TN had inappropriately downloaded files from its competitor Oracle.

How Visitors View Websites
By Yuri Filimonov · July 2, 2007

When planning and improving a website, it is important to know how people view websites. Knowing this will help you to design your site in such a way, that people will be able to find and do what they want on your website.

How to describe visitor behaviour?

Before changing the site layout, it is important to understand the nature of human behaviour on the website. It helps that certain known patterns apply to human behaviour, such as:

Google Hardware To Go Through Ingram Micro
By Doug Caverly · June 27, 2007

If you want to get the Google Mini or Google Search Appliance, talk to Ingram Micro – even as sales surpass 9,000 units, the company has been selected to distribute Google’s hardware.

Fred Thompson Gets All The Media
By WebProNews Staff · June 26, 2007 · 8

Potential Republican Presidential candidate Fred Thompson has a website that should be a model for anyone aspiring to political office.

Study: Live Chat Ups Conversions Tenfold
By WebProNews Staff · June 21, 2007 · 29

Sales, online and off, are closed when the customer trusts the seller. To that end, how far does including live chat in the online sales and checkout process go toward sealing the deal? Numbers are coming in, and they’re looking good.

AT&T: Be Vewwy Vewwy Quiet About Cheap DSL
By WebProNews Staff · June 20, 2007

AT&T’s been sounding its trumpets about new wireless video offerings, especially in advance of the much-anticipated iPhone launch. They’ve kept those trumpets far away, however, from their FCC-required $10 per month DSL.

New Web User Same As The Old Web User
By WebProNews Staff · June 19, 2007 · 2

Humans change slower – much slower – than technology. That’s the guiding conclusion of usability guru Jakob Nielsen, who notes that 80% of Web usability guidelines from the Nineties still hold today.

Long Tail Keyword Research
By David Leonhardt · June 19, 2007

Not long ago I blogged about Crazy Egg Website Conversion Tests, which I thought was a pretty neat little tool.

One of our readers suggested trying HitTail, which is certainly not the same thing, but is very, very useful for anyone trying to learn something about a website’s visitors. It is a long-tail keyword research tool.

Microsoft Office Live Teams with Website Pros
By Bill Hartzer · June 6, 2007

Microsoft Office Live is teaming up with Website Pros, a provider of website building tools, internet marketing, and lead generation solutions, to offer web site design and search engine marketing services. Microsoft Office Live is attempting to make it easier for small business to get online by offering them new “Do-It-for-Me Services”.

Not only will they provide easy and affordable do-it-yourself tools, Microsoft Office Live will add “do-it-for-me” help as well.

Microsoft Wants To Do It For You
By WebProNews Staff · June 6, 2007

Microsoft plans to offer a deal to its Office Live customers that will provide site design and search marketing services to those clients.

Search Engine Diversity – More Website Exposure
By Rene LeMerle · June 1, 2007

"Google ranking this and Google ranking that"… it’s all everyone talks about. But a recent report by Infospace highlights the need for online businesses to focus their search engine optimization efforts across more than just Google.

Top 15 Social Media Marketing Resources
By WebProNews Staff · May 29, 2007

At Social Media Systems we’ve been discussing how to build out a healthy blogroll, both to aid our visitors, provide valuable content, and to enhance our social media marketing campaigns.

When To Use Graphics On Your Website
By Yuri Filimonov · May 15, 2007

Overall, using text is more preferrable, than using graphics (images, pictures, Flash and so on) on a website, because it is easier to understand and remember – and also accessible to the people and the search engines.

But there are some cases, when using graphics is the right thing to do.

When to use graphics

As mentioned in the earlier article, graphics should only be used, when it is absolutely necessary, such as:

Search Engine Friendly: On Page Content
By Stoney deGeyter · May 10, 2007

About a year or two ago I had a potential client contact me to inquire about our services. They had heard a lot about us and were really interested in our services for their website marketing. But our discussions ended up hitting a snag before we could get a contract signed. In fact, I basically told them that we were not the ones to be able to help them.

What was the snag? They were unwilling to make any changes to the visible look of their website. They said they had poured thousands of dollars into the design and they liked it exactly the way it was.

Forbes Finds SEO Red Light District
By WebProNews Staff · May 1, 2007 · 17

SEO is a difficult topic for anybody new to the game. It’s proved especially difficult for Forbes, where an article about "Google Hell" had the experts shaking their heads. Not to rag too much on Forbes, the article did present an opportunity for clarification about Google’s supplemental index.

Social Media Disrupts Company Communication
By Karl Long · April 30, 2007

I was inspired this morning by Daniel’s post on his Emergence Media blog titled Marketing Changes: CMOs, Evangelist, Social Media Programs, Website Strategy Positioning, it’s a very meaty article and worth a good read.

Longer Tail of Media Consumption

Google Steps on eBay’s Toes
By Joe Lewis · April 19, 2007 · 1

Google has set up a system to provide content recommendations and random site navigation based on information contained within a user’s search history and preferences, which would seem to be a step onto StumbleUpon’s turf. If the eBay purchase of StubmleUpon goes through, we could have a classic confrontation.

Google Analytics Expands On Website Optimizer
By WebProNews Staff · April 17, 2007

The Website Optimizer that Google made available to all of its AdWords clients shows how well (or poorly) links convert; Google’s Analytics team thinks people can benefit by seeing how users of both Optimizer and Analytics can use them together.

SES – Mobile Search Site Creation and Optimization
By Ross Dunn · April 12, 2007

The following is coverage of the Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York presentation called “Mobile Search Optimization” by Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works, Gregory Markel, President of Infuse Creative LLC and Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing at iCrossing.

About Google Website Optimizer
By Jeff Horsager · April 11, 2007

If you can measure it, you can improve it. The promise of scientific advertising, marketing with measurable results, is now available to anyone. Anyone can Increase conversion rates with the Google Website Optimizer. Any website that has conversion as a goal will benefit tremendously by engaging in testing using this tool.