Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

* Google Maps - the first of these that offered a satellite view of any part of the earth. You can use it as a map, get directions or search for web listings in a certain geographical area.
* MapQuest - my personal favorite for mapping and directions - and getting better all the time.
* Yahoo! Maps - also getting better all the time. I find the ads more annoying though.

People are looking for information, they use a variety of types of search such as Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask as the predominant channels. There’s also news search , blog search and search within social media sites. Any time something can be searched on, that’s an optimization opportunity. Increasing awareness comes from making it easier for people to find you when they’re looking for information.

<gmail.com>: Google’s attempt at free e-mail. Instead of the 2-6 MB of free space that Yahoo and Hotmail used to provide, Gmail gives you 2,600 MB (and growing) of space (this has already caused Hotmail and Yahoo to raise their amounts to 250 MB and more; AOL.com now gives you 2,000 MB free). I have been using it for 1.5 years and it’s terrific and fast. One caveat: Google runs small, text-ads on the side of the screen, based on content of your e-mail messages. That’s scary to a lot of people, though Google promises no human will ever see your messages, just those Google servers (remember, however, that all e-mail can potentially be scanned by various systems). I don’t use it as my primary e-mail. I use it in two ways, with two accounts. One is an account to which I send messages, photos, PDFs, I want to save for future access, including big messages that I don’t want taking up space in my regular inbox - kind of a “greatest hits” collection. The other is an account that get a copy of every e-mail message I get, so that it’s all backed up and available in one place.

I’ve spoken previously about Windows Live Contacts but never really did much with it. I didn’t have an immediate use for it and I was growing increasingly apathetic about the entire area of contact grabbers / importers. It was a shame really as it was a really exciting project with Microsoft leading the way in the area. It’s been only recently that Google and Yahoo have caught up and released their own APIs for accessing their users data.

I’ve moaned about how great it would be if we could get a users contacts without having to ask for their password. With services like Windows Live Contacts this is finally possible

With the possibility of actually using the code myself creeping up on the horizon I decided to put the time in to write wrappers for PHP. It can be broken down into two components.

Windows Live Delegated Authentication The first thing we need to do is get permission from the user to access their data. There was already a PHP wrapper for this but it did far more than I needed so I’ve rewritten it and ignored the parts I don’t expect to need. This evening I submitted it to the PEAR proposal process.

Windows Live Contacts The second step is fetching the contacts for the user after you have their permission. I could only find a small test script for this so a more complete implementation was definitely needed. Again, I’ve just submitted the code for this to the PEAR proposal process.

Both of these packages will likely undergo changes as they go through the proposal process but if you can’t wait to get started the files are available to be installed now on the proposal pages. The easiest way is using the PEAR installer. If you haven’t used PEAR before please take a look at the manual. If you’re still unsure of anything post a comment below.

How would you like to be 1 on Google search results for keywords you want? What would that do for your business? And imagine if you don’t have to pay for it! This is biggest opportunity in 2008 for webmasters who have been doing Search Engine Optimizing (SEO), advertising or marketing them selfs to get to Number One spot on Google and Yahoo.

Website linking structure and number of links pointing to your site or page is crucial to ranking High in Google and if you rank good in Google, chances are you’ll do good in Yahoo and other search engines but top 3 search engines that will bring most traffic are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Analyzing your competitors is important and included in Free SEO tips because search engines do analyze incoming links to your website as part of their ranking criteria which is called Page Rank (PR).

So what other websites are doing to rank on top of search results. In order to find out you need to gather a significant amount of data about the top ranking sites for whatever keyword or phrase you are trying to optimize your page for, like:

1. Competition’s rank in the Search Engines Results for given keyword
2. The number of incoming links to the site’s home page, not including

internal links.
3. What keywords they use in the title tag
4. Number of links containing keywords in the link text
5. PageRank of linking pages
6. The Alexa traffic ranking

Most of this information can be collected free by querying Google and Yahoo (Read about it in this Analyzing Individual Keyword Phrase article) and using free seo tools but it is very time consuming and you can’t get all data in one place.

I use This SEO Tool that can easily crawl a Web site and compile statistics on keyword usage throughout the site with single click of a mouse and all data is displayed in one window.

Links are one of the most important parts of successfully running a search engine optimization campaign. As a matter of fact, having well-placed links will do a lot to help to push your website to the top of the search engine result pages for the keywords of your choice. Although there are many different ways for you to acquire these links, there are some ways which are almost automated in nature. By taking advantage of every aspect of your link building campaign, you can not only get your website listed in the search engines quickly, you can also be benefited by the incoming links for a long time to come.

One of the easiest forms of linking that exists is that which is found in directory submissions. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of directories for you to choose from on the Internet where you can post a link to your website. Some of these directories are free to post links and others charge a fee, either a one time fee or a recurring fee. It is up to you to decide if it is worth the effort to post to the free directories and if it is worth the cost to post to some of the paid directories.

Some of the paid directories are very important for you to be listed in, regardless of what the price is. This is especially the case if you are a little bit experienced with search engine optimization and are fairly confident in your ability to get your website listed well on the search engines from your efforts. Some of the paid directories that you want to make sure you’re part of include Yahoo and Joeant.com. Yahoo is fairly expensive at $299 a year but by having a link in the Yahoo Directory, you will be giving your SEO efforts of major shot in the arm. Popular directories such as Joeant are an excellent way for you to position yourself with some back links as well.

Submitting your website to the free directories is also an excellent way to give yourself a boost in the SERPS as well as getting yourself listed on the search engines initially. Google does not necessarily give as much weight to these free search engine submissions but remember, Google is not the only kid on the block. Yahoo also has the ability to send you a massive amount of traffic if you’re positioned well in their search engine results and MSN can send you traffic as well. Each of these lesser search engines will place a lot of weight on many incoming links from these free directories.

All in all, submitting to directories, whether free or paid is an excellent way to set yourself up for success in your search engine optimization efforts. Make sure, however, that you don’t stop with just a few simple directory submissions. Make it a part of your overall efforts to continue improving on your rankings in the search engines.

Yahoo! Finance was the leader in the category during May with 18.5 million visitors, up 58 percent versus year ago, followed by AOL Money & Finance with 15.2 million visitors (up 48 percent) and MSN Money with 13.7 million visitors (up 13 percent).

Here are the top 10 Financial News and Research Sites:

Total Unique Visitors (millions) May 2008
1. Yahoo! Finance 18.5
2. AOL Money & Finance 15.2
3. MSN Money 13.7
4. Forbes Property 7.0
5. Dow Jones & Company 6.6
6. CNN Money 6.0
7. BNET 5.6
8. TheStreet.com Sites 5.3
9. Reuters Sites 4.8
10. Reed Business Information 3.8

The category displayed visitor growth across virtually all demographic segments. However, certain segments contributed more than others.

The number of visitors to the category age 50 and older grew 46 percent versus year ago, while visitors under 50 grew by 32 percent. Above average growth was also seen in the following segments: households earning at least $60,000 annually (40 percent), households with children (38 percent) and households with at least 5 people (57 percent).

In other words, the segments displaying the greatest growth are those more likely to have greater financial responsibilities or challenges, such as paying for their kids to go to college, or needing to figure out how best to handle rapidly escalating monthly payments on home mortgages. And don’t get me started on rising gas prices.

Why should search engine marketers pay attention to this trend? Check out your favorite financial news site, search for a couple of publicly traded companies, and see how many press releases you can find in the results. Most of them have been distributed by Business Wire, Marketwire, PrimeNewswire and PR Newswire.

David Utter over at WebProNews has written an insightful piece on the possibility Microsoft wants Yahoo mainly for the old Overture patents it holds, in particular patent 361.

Between his article which clarifies much of Usman Latif’s posts on the topic as well as Latif’s own detailed post from 2005 when Google fired the employee for blogging - shows a very good conspiracy and Machivellian business theory.

Is ‘patent 361′ the Holy Grail of our industry? Does it hold the power of the search engine industry? Could we see a long-haired Tom Hanks snooping around San Jose this year looking for clues?

When you see the government investigating the Yahoo/Google deal, and the cries about the possible Microsoft buying of Yahoo, this makes for even more high drama.

Is Jerry Yang refusing Microsoft advances because he knows the secrets. Is patent 361 the National Treasure like source of all riches in paid search?

This definitely gives a different perspective to the entire situation. I am waiting for David Brown to write the novel.

Over at Yahoo’s Search Marketing blog, Marketing Communications Manager Roger Park is offering up tips on converting your search ads. He breaks down a bunch of best practices principles to three main steps: Optimize, Navigate and Track.

Optimize

Optimizing your landing pages is crucial to a profitable search marketing campaign. Park advises:

* Have a “deep link” to a product on your site
* Offer several contact methods
* Online shopping carts should be secure and easily visible
* Remove broken links
* Have good server availability

Navigate

Park encourages site owners and developers to put themselves in the shoes of their web site visitors. I personally have found that many of my clients have a difficult time being able to do this. They’re just too close to their business. So, it was nice that Park also served up some tangible tips:

* Create an obvious pathway to the product that the visitor searched for
* Don’t have too many layers between the landing page and the end goal - no more than 2 clicks
* If the end goal is sale, move non-commercial content below the fold

Track

Successful marketing campaigns are built on solid data. Consistently evaluate your data and tweak your paid search campaigns accordingly. Yahoo’s conversion-only analytics tool can help you do that. The tool can help you analyze keywords, tweak landing pages, and improve under-performing ads.