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Marketing Methods Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Naper Design | Naperville Web Design and SEO
This is the first of three post that will be added over the next few days. There is very little chance that the thoughts will stay completely congruent, but there's just far more than one post within this topic...
While linking structure has always been an important piece of the SEO equation, it seems that a more intuitive linking structure is becoming more and more necessary for modern SEO development. The day of submitting to random directories or commenting on unrelated blogs is long gone. Spam comments and unrelated directory listings cause damage to website relevance and search engines are constantly looking for ways to counter their effects. That being said, there are highly effective methods of getting related backlinks, they just require more work than the spammers and scammers are likely to give.
If you’re wondering, “is Christian about to rail on the Spammers again?” the answer is always, yes! Spammers not only made the system harder for all of us, they’ve caused themselves to become endangered. Yes, you can still find tons of affiliate websites offering their “Link Building Software”. This software is usually some form of Blog Spamming software. While these sites can be found all over the place, they’re owned by only a small group of spam-jockeys who and are becoming marginalized by people becoming more aware of affiliate scams and MLM’s.`
Ok, now that we got that out of the way, blog backlink software is going to do nothing for your site but possibly get it banned from Google. Not only is the software disastrous for your reputation with the SERPS, they almost always have a very short and mitigated list of sites to choose from. They claim that their program makes searches through Google, but this is only a half truth, they are most often pre-rigged with a select amount of search criteria. The resulting searches leave the user with the same tired group of blogs that were used 1,000’s of times before by other Spammers. Most of these sites and pages that have been bombarded by spam are already flagged by Google. Add your link to this page, and you risk being considered spam as well.
That out of the way, the question of how to get the quality links and avoid being all spammy is going to be asked. Unfortunately, the answer will have to wait until tomorrow. We're out of coffee.
Like everyone else, we are constantly looking for ways to save money on our bottom line. We are often testing and grading monitoring and Analytic websites and software to determine which is the most effective and gives the most accurate results
If you've played with even half of the major names, you've likely run into and identified one major problem... they all give different numbers. Many find themselves wondering which ones to trust and what to make of the numbers they've received. Here is our take on the top 6 site Analytics and why we use them.
Google Analyticor- OK, To those who always wish to bash the resource, I start by agreeing with you that Google looses a lot of information when scripts are blocked. That being said, the number of people using script blockers is still not that high, so it's really a moot point. Google Analyticor is the most widely used website traffic index and is at least one must for web traffic monitoring. -to avoid the debate, that's all we're saying about Google today-
Majestic SEO Tools- While Majestic has been around and has had a major resource for a few years now, the past year has offered a lot of new and useful tools within the site. While it requires an account to gain access to some of the better tools, they are well worth the free account and the ten minutes it takes to set it up. After a month of indexed tracking, Majestic provides a complete breakdown of all your website backlinks. This is quite useful in determining and targeting where to make more backlinks and what anchor text to use with them. Granted, there are plenty of costly and buggy forms of software that will perform this function, but most of them accompany an affiliate scam or someone's get rich quick "Pyramid Scam". While the data for the links may be lagging, it's fairly respectable in determining the needs of a backlink campaign.
Quantcast - Same as below...
Compete- Do they help? Honestly, not so much. What they do offer is valued information for those considering advertising on your website. While many would argue, and often I'd agree with them that the information in both sites is a random guess, they are free and offer a strong form of traffic evidence when looking to sell ad-space on your site. Whether you like them or not, it would be suggested to get listed within their database. While you may not like or trust their services, most advertising groups are going to want to see their numbers to put ads on your site.
SEOmoz Free Tools- These are an incredible assortment of custom tools designed for and by SEOmoz. The SEO tools and link structure tools provided here are much stronger than most of their competition offers. While we have yet to try their Pro Tools for review, we will soon be putting it to the test. All I can say it that if the pro tools excel well above the free tools, we will likely remain a customer and refer our clients. The free tools include several strong tools, but the best one and most unique is the "Trifecta Tool". This tool gives a full breakdown of a site in Page, Domain, or Blog format. The information given here is usually free in it's individual formats, but the way that they collate and arrange the data makes for a clean and valuable view of a websites performance. It's well worth signing up for a free account to try it out.
HUBSpot Grader.com Program - What can't be said for the brilliant strategy of Inbound Marketing that HUBSpot has highlighted with this and many of its other websites. Websitegrader.com is one of the most widely used website evaluation websites in use today. With over 2.6 Million sites graded to date and an Alexa ranking around 2,000, they are becoming the most widely use "quick check" for determining any websites effectiveness. We, like anyone else who has received it, value the 99% grade we were given by websitegrader.com and view and updated score from them on a weekly basis to see what adjustments need to be made. If you have yet to run your site through their system, give it a try. The information given will only serve to increase the reach and effectiveness of your website.
We're glad to be back in the land of the tubes. The past two weeks has made for an incredible experience of getting our site back up and working out the finer points with our host.
Before we get into that portion though, we should probably explain why we were down...
As we often point out, we are hosted by Byethost. They and Bluehost are the two hosting companies we've come to trust the most for shared server space. Unfortunately, we discovered that a plugin we were using for the feeds was not well accepted by our neighbors on the server. We were capturing all of our feeds with the Wordpress plugin wp-o-matic. What we didn't realize is that this plugin causes for some major drain on the server side, and when on shared space, damages your neighbors bandwidth... OOPS!!!
We honestly never considered that such a widely-used plugin would be the cause of such issues, but test afterward have shown that it couldn't have been anything else. Because of the excessive bandwidth, resources, and memory that wp-o-matic was stripping from the shared space, we were booted to a Virtual Private Server... Ie...Banished to the Degaba System.
It took a week of negotiating, but byethost was willing to settle the discourse once we were well assured that it had to be the plugin that was causing all of he trouble. One week later, we're back up and on the way again.... Needless to say, our feeds will no longer run through WP-O-Matic.
Now for the sob-story
While we were only down about a day and back and forth from IP's for one week, Google took a lot of notice. Our impressions went from an average of 1,000/day to 22 tonight. Our traffic went from an average of 200/day to 30 tonight.
The past week of being back up is representative of absolute downtime in the SERPs.
Notice in the screen-shot that the exact date of being down is visible, as well as the subsequent falling out with Google ranking.
While this is a pretty steep setback for the short-term, we will return to our previous standing rather quickly. We've run into similar situations with client sites, but never thought we would need to do damage control of our own.
Here are the following steps that must be taken directly after an event like this.
1. Immediate push for Back-links- During the month following a down-time like this one, the need for sites around the web to verify your existence is crucial. The pages that Google attempts and fails to Crawl can be put on the back burners for a period of time. Making a strong push for links and acknowledgment can get a faster crawl to those skipped pages than would likely come otherwise.
2. Add more content. We all know that the best way to get Google's attention is to give it something new to look at. While we feed several different blogs on this site, we also enjoy adding our own content on a regular basis At this moment its pertinent to add more than we normally would. The additional content will signal that the site is not dead and is in fact very much alive and active.
3. In addition to adding the content, we have to make sure that Google is aware of it being added. To drive home this point, we submit sitemaps... Several sitemaps.
From XML to ROR, wee submit every possible format of sitemap available. Some may think this a bit eccentric, but in dire moments like these, it can be the difference between being demoted for weeks or for months. For additional sitemaps in Wordpress, we suggest using the following
Sitemap Index - a PHP virtual sitemap built upon every update.
Google News XML Sitemap -Automatically generate an XML sitemap for inclusion to Google News 2.0
XML Sitemap Feed - Creates a feed that complies with the XML Sitemap
We also have some made at xml-sitemaps.com in url.txt and rss.ror format.
Our running experiment will now be to see how long it will take to return to the traffic and ranking that we had last month. We will share this experience with you all and welcome any suggestion or thoughts you would like to add.
So, it's not like the Acai Berry is the first or will be the last scam on line. Every day hundreds of affiliate sites are added to gather information about prospective customers and leads. I actually love hearing people laugh and pride themselves on how many of these "Leads" they've collected. The one problem with calling them leads(with thinking of them as a potential group of people to be marketed to) is that they usually don't want to be on the list of leads to begin with.
Affiliate Email Lead Generation is the laziest and least performing form of marketing that there is. The only people who make any form of true wealth from running these scams are the leaders at the pinnacle of their particular pyramid scheme. I call them pyramid schemes because that's just what they are. If you prefer Multi-Level Marketing Scheme or Platform Scheme, please understand that changing the name of a scam does not change the fact that it's Pyramid Scheme and a scam. Having websites that take two minutes of scrolling to reach the bottom and serve only to harvest email addresses or to sell junk is still scam sales and weak marketing techniques. It's like the guy who claims to be the modern Fonz. He gets a decent amount of dates and interaction, but has to work nonstop to do so, burning every bridge as he goes.
I'm not certain when it happened, but at some point people began perpetuating a fake reality of internet marketing. With the lowest conversion ratio of any sales "Ever" these people are bragging about the rewards to be had from internet affiliate marketing. I should qualify my statements though, I am an affiliate for Woo Themes, Theme Forest, and many others... I am not speaking of this form of affiliation, I'm speaking of the obvious crooks like"incomehome55.com" (I just don't like giving those crooks a link to prove this point) or the crooks that are in the Rx or Acai camp.
They blast massive amounts of scam material and give bad names to internet marketers... For What? To make sales as poor salesman. The sad truth is that these affiliates with long draping websites are so disastrous as salesman that they've taken the scam route as their only option to make a living. At this point, there are far more scammers than true marketers out there.
There is hope though. There are true marketing methods still being practiced on line. There are still marketing groups that demand for themselves to turn a conversion rate of at least 10%. If you are with a group that doesn't even mention their conversion ratio, it would be wise to ask. A quality group will be glad to show(prideful to say the least) that their conversion ratios are working in their clients benefit. The initial reaction to these numbers is the knowledge that more people that find your product are purchasing through this marketing method. Purchasers/Subscribers are definite cause for celebration... but don't discount the other reward.
Your future clients won't perceive you to be a crook because of all of the Spam and Brute Force marketing techniques the other guys will be associated with. This is the true reward. Having true "Leads" recognize your brand as one to be trusted, nit run from.
How many times have you had that one client that doesn't listen to anything and wants to take control of the entire design? Recently we encountered another client who has an assistant in this place the entire and SEO project in jeopardy. She has several years within the media marketing industry and as a result leaves that she can dictate to others how to run their business. What she does not understand is SEO.
While working for a client in the past two weeks she contacted us demanding for changes in our marketing strategy. The changes she demanded were due in part to her being removed from the marketing strategy of this company.
So here we have the term Web 3.0 coming into common usage. The problem is, what does it actually mean? Many are scratching their heads and asking, "isn't that what Web 2.0 was supposed to be about".
The reference to Web 3.0 was made by members of the W3 to describe the desire for a Semantic Web. This new "Semantic Web" was to be user friendly and interactive... (I know; sounds familiar, right?). In almost all of the laymen terms, it sounds virtually the same as Web 2.0; the difference is when we look at the core problems with Web 2.0 and the theories behind it.
LOL Cats were the greatest gift of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 was to give an interactive world of exchanging ideas in an intelligent way. Many would argue about how intelligent the exchange has actually been, but intelligent communication was the intent. People have built on these principles to pass information accross the internet in a manner that resembled intelligence, but have found one major piece of the equasion was left out....
The Computers didn't know what we were saying..!!!
The main purpose of Web 3.0 is to cooperatively enable the computers to understand the connections being made within the internet. By enableing them to have an understanding of the importance that real people are placing on content, the systems will be able to weed out all of the Black Hat and Scam jobs.(at least for a little while)
Here's the post of wikipedia:
"Purpose
Humans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Irish word for "directory", reserving a library book, and searching for a low price for a DVD. However, one computer cannot accomplish all of these tasks without human direction, because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so computers can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, combining, and acting upon information on the web.
Tim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the semantic web as follows:[6]
I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
– Tim Berners-Lee, 1999
Semantic publishing will benefit greatly from the semantic web. In particular, the semantic web is expected to revolutionize scientific publishing, such as real-time publishing and sharing of experimental data on the Internet. This simple but radical idea is now being explored by W3C HCLS group's Scientific Publishing Task Force.
Semantic Web application areas are experiencing intensified interest due to the rapid growth in the use of the Web, together with the innovation and renovation of information content technologies. The Semantic Web is regarded as an integrator across different content and information applications and systems, and provide mechanisms for the realisation of Enterprise Information Systems. The rapidity of the growth experienced provides the impetus for researchers to focus on the creation and dissemination of innovative Semantic Web technologies, where the envisaged ’Semantic Web’ is long overdue. Often the terms ’Semantics’, ’metadata’, ’ontologies’ and ’Semantic Web’ are used inconsistently. In particular, these terms are used as everyday terminology by researchers and practitioners, spanning a vast landscape of different fields, technologies, concepts and application areas. Furthermore, there is confusion with regards to the current status of the enabling technologies envisioned to realise the Semantic Web. In a paper presented by Gerber, Barnard and Van der Merwe[7] the Semantic Web landscape are charted and a brief summary of related terms and enabling technologies are presented. The architectural model proposed by Tim Berners-Lee is used as basis to present a status model that reflects current and emerging technologies"
What this means for developers?
More work... more education.. longer nights
For those true to the desire of solving the next development or SEO equation, this is more tantalizing than tantrum causing. Those who enjoy doing quality SEO work will only see this as a challenge. This is also seen as a much needed improvement to kill off the scammera that kill the face of our business.
What this means for the "No Talent A$$ Clowns" using Black and Grey Hat Techniques:
You better learn some real SEO, or your days are numbered. Many times before these threats have been issued by the W3, but never before have they issued exact concepts that will be so easily incorporated by both Google and MSN. There will always be those who skirt the system, but most will find their cheep tricks no longer working after these new rules are implemented.
Here is the basic visual guide and reference to the new Semantic Solution. i'll leave links acrross to the entire Wiki article.
We will be evaluating the software available for the changes and should have a review within the next few weeks...
Cheers.
Web 3.0
Tim Berners-Lee has described the semantic web as a component of 'Web 3.0'.[9]
People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you've got an overlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty — on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you'll have access to an unbelievable data resource..."
Many files on a typical computer can be loosely divided into documents and data. Documents like mail messages, reports, and brochures are read by humans. Data, like calendars, addressbooks, playlists, and spreadsheets are presented using an application program which lets them be viewed, searched and combined in many ways.
Currently, the World Wide Web is based mainly on documents written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), a markup convention that is used for coding a body of text interspersed with multimedia objects such as images and interactive forms. Metadata tags, for example
<metaname="keywords"content="computing, computer studies, computer"><metaname="description"content="Cheap widgets for sale"><metaname="author"content="John Doe">
provide a method by which computers can categorise the content of web pages.
With HTML and a tool to render it (perhaps web browser software, perhaps another user agent), one can create and present a page that lists items for sale. The HTML of this catalog page can make simple, document-level assertions such as "this document's title is 'Widget Superstore'", but there is no capability within the HTML itself to assert unambiguously that, for example, item number X586172 is an Acme Gizmo with a retail price of €199, or that it is a consumer product. Rather, HTML can only say that the span of text "X586172" is something that should be positioned near "Acme Gizmo" and "€199", etc. There is no way to say "this is a catalog" or even to establish that "Acme Gizmo" is a kind of title or that "€199" is a price. There is also no way to express that these pieces of information are bound together in describing a discrete item, distinct from other items perhaps listed on the page.
Semantic HTML refers to the traditional HTML practice of markup following intention, rather than specifying layout details directly. For example, the use of <em> denoting "emphasis" rather than <i>, which specifies italics. Layout details are left up to the browser, in combination with Cascading Style Sheets. But this practice falls short of specifying the semantics of objects such as items for sale or prices.
Microformats represent unofficial attempts to extend HTML syntax to create machine-readable semantic markup about objects such as retail stores and items for sale.
Semantic Web solutions
The Semantic Web takes the solution further. It involves publishing in languages specifically designed for data: Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Extensible Markup Language (XML). HTML describes documents and the links between them. RDF, OWL, and XML, by contrast, can describe arbitrary things such as people, meetings, or airplane parts. Tim Berners-Lee calls the resulting network of Linked Data the Giant Global Graph, in contrast to the HTML-based World Wide Web.
These technologies are combined in order to provide descriptions that supplement or replace the content of Web documents. Thus, content may manifest itself as descriptive data stored in Web-accessible databases[10], or as markup within documents (particularly, in Extensible HTML (XHTML) interspersed with XML, or, more often, purely in XML, with layout or rendering cues stored separately). The machine-readable descriptions enable content managers to add meaning to the content, i.e., to describe the structure of the knowledge we have about that content. In this way, a machine can process knowledge itself, instead of text, using processes similar to human deductive reasoning and inference, thereby obtaining more meaningful results and helping computers to perform automated information gathering and research.
An example of a tag that would be used in a non-semantic web page:
<item>cat</item>
Encoding similar information in a semantic web page might look like this:
Tim Berners-Lee has described the semantic web as a component of 'Web 3.0'.[9]
People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you've got an overlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty — on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you'll have access to an unbelievable data resource..."
Many files on a typical computer can be loosely divided into documents and data. Documents like mail messages, reports, and brochures are read by humans. Data, like calendars, addressbooks, playlists, and spreadsheets are presented using an application program which lets them be viewed, searched and combined in many ways.
Currently, the World Wide Web is based mainly on documents written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), a markup convention that is used for coding a body of text interspersed with multimedia objects such as images and interactive forms. Metadata tags, for example
<metaname="keywords"content="computing, computer studies, computer"><metaname="description"content="Cheap widgets for sale"><metaname="author"content="John Doe">
provide a method by which computers can categorise the content of web pages.
With HTML and a tool to render it (perhaps web browser software, perhaps another user agent), one can create and present a page that lists items for sale. The HTML of this catalog page can make simple, document-level assertions such as "this document's title is 'Widget Superstore'", but there is no capability within the HTML itself to assert unambiguously that, for example, item number X586172 is an Acme Gizmo with a retail price of €199, or that it is a consumer product. Rather, HTML can only say that the span of text "X586172" is something that should be positioned near "Acme Gizmo" and "€199", etc. There is no way to say "this is a catalog" or even to establish that "Acme Gizmo" is a kind of title or that "€199" is a price. There is also no way to express that these pieces of information are bound together in describing a discrete item, distinct from other items perhaps listed on the page.
Semantic HTML refers to the traditional HTML practice of markup following intention, rather than specifying layout details directly. For example, the use of <em> denoting "emphasis" rather than <i>, which specifies italics. Layout details are left up to the browser, in combination with Cascading Style Sheets. But this practice falls short of specifying the semantics of objects such as items for sale or prices.
Microformats represent unofficial attempts to extend HTML syntax to create machine-readable semantic markup about objects such as retail stores and items for sale.
The Semantic Web takes the solution further. It involves publishing in languages specifically designed for data: Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Extensible Markup Language (XML). HTML describes documents and the links between them. RDF, OWL, and XML, by contrast, can describe arbitrary things such as people, meetings, or airplane parts. Tim Berners-Lee calls the resulting network of Linked Data the Giant Global Graph, in contrast to the HTML-based World Wide Web.
These technologies are combined in order to provide descriptions that supplement or replace the content of Web documents. Thus, content may manifest itself as descriptive data stored in Web-accessible databases[10], or as markup within documents (particularly, in Extensible HTML (XHTML) interspersed with XML, or, more often, purely in XML, with layout or rendering cues stored separately). The machine-readable descriptions enable content managers to add meaning to the content, i.e., to describe the structure of the knowledge we have about that content. In this way, a machine can process knowledge itself, instead of text, using processes similar to human deductive reasoning and inference, thereby obtaining more meaningful results and helping computers to perform automated information gathering and research.
An example of a tag that would be used in a non-semantic web page:
<item>cat</item>
Encoding similar information in a semantic web page might look like this:
Critics (e.g. Which Semantic Web?) question the basic feasibility of a complete or even partial fulfillment of the semantic web. Cory Doctorow's critique ("metacrap") is from the perspective of human behavior and personal preferences. For example, people lie: they may include spurious metadata into Web pages in an attempt to mislead Semantic Web engines that naively assume the metadata's veracity. This phenomenon was well-known with metatags that fooled the AltaVista ranking algorithm into elevating the ranking of certain Web pages: the Google indexing engine specifically looks for such attempts at manipulation. Peter Gärdenfors and Timo Honkela point out that logic-based semantic web technologies cover only a fraction of the relevant phenomena related to semantics [15][16].
Where semantic web technologies have found a greater degree of practical adoption, it has tended to be among core specialized communities and organizations for intra-company projects.[17] The practical constraints toward adoption have appeared less challenging where domain and scope is more limited than that of the general public and the World-Wide Web.[17]
The original 2001 Scientific American article by Berners-Lee described an expected evolution of the existing Web to a Semantic Web.[18] A complete evolution as described by Berners-Lee has yet to occur. In 2006, Berners-Lee and colleagues stated that: "This simple idea, however, remains largely unrealized."[19] While the idea is still in the making, it seems to evolve quickly and inspire many. Between 2007-2010 several scholars have already explored first applications and the social potential of the semantic web in the business and health sectors, and for social networking [20] and even for the broader evolution of democracy, specifically, how a society forms its common will in a democratic manner through a semantic web [21]
Enthusiasm about the semantic web could be tempered by concerns regarding censorship and privacy. For instance, text-analyzing techniques can now be easily bypassed by using other words, metaphors for instance, or by using images in place of words. An advanced implementation of the semantic web would make it much easier for governments to control the viewing and creation of online information, as this information would be much easier for an automated content-blocking machine to understand. In addition, the issue has also been raised that, with the use of FOAF files and geo location meta-data, there would be very little anonymity associated with the authorship of articles on things such as a personal blog.
Another criticism of the semantic web is that it would be much more time-consuming to create and publish content because there would need to be two formats for one piece of data: one for human viewing and one for machines. However, many web applications in development are addressing this issue by creating a machine-readable format upon the publishing of data or the request of a machine for such data. The development of microformats has been one reaction to this kind of criticism.
Specifications such as eRDF and RDFa allow arbitrary RDF data to be embedded in HTML pages. The GRDDL (Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Language) mechanism allows existing material (including microformats) to be automatically interpreted as RDF, so publishers only need to use a single format, such as HTML.
The idea of a semantic web, able to describe, and associate meaning with data, necessarily involves more than simple XHTML mark-up code. It is based on an assumption that, in order for it to be possible to endow machines with an ability to accurately interpret web homed content, far more than the mere ordered relationships involving letters and words is necessary as underlying infrastructure, (attendant to semantic issues). Otherwise, most of the supportive functionality would have been available in Web 2.0 (and before), and it would have been possible to derive a semantically capable Web with minor, incremental additions.
Additions to the infrastructure to support semantic functionality include latent dynamic network models that can, under certain conditions, be 'trained' to appropriately 'learn' meaning based on order data, in the process 'learning' relationships with order (a kind of rudimentary working grammar). See for example latent semantic analysis
XML provides an elemental syntax for content structure within documents, yet associates no semantics with the meaning of the content contained within.
XML Schema is a language for providing and restricting the structure and content of elements contained within XML documents.
RDF is a simple language for expressing data models, which refer to objects ("resources") and their relationships. An RDF-based model can be represented in XML syntax.
RDF Schema extends RDF and is a vocabulary for describing properties and classes of RDF-based resources, with semantics for generalized-hierarchies of such properties and classes.
OWL adds more vocabulary for describing properties and classes: among others, relations between classes (e.g. disjointness), cardinality (e.g. "exactly one"), equality, richer typing of properties, characteristics of properties (e.g. symmetry), and enumerated classes.
SPARQL is a protocol and query language for semantic web data sources.
Unifying Logic and Proof layers are undergoing active research.
The intent is to enhance the usability and usefulness of the Web and its interconnected resources through:
Servers which expose existing data systems using the RDF and SPARQL standards. Many converters to RDF exist from different applications. Relational databases are an important source. The semantic web server attaches to the existing system without affecting its operation.
Documents "marked up" with semantic information (an extension of the HTML <meta>tags used in today's Web pages to supply information for Web search engines using web crawlers). This could be machine-understandable information about the human-understandable content of the document (such as the creator, title, description, etc., of the document) or it could be purely metadata representing a set of facts (such as resources and services elsewhere in the site). (Note that anything that can be identified with a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) can be described, so the semantic web can reason about animals, people, places, ideas, etc.) Semantic markup is often generated automatically, rather than manually.
Common metadata vocabularies (ontologies) and maps between vocabularies that allow document creators to know how to mark up their documents so that agents can use the information in the supplied metadata (so that Author in the sense of 'the Author of the page' won't be confused with Author in the sense of a book that is the subject of a book review).
Automated agents to perform tasks for users of the semantic web using this data
Web-based services (often with agents of their own) to supply information specifically to agents (for example, a Trust service that an agent could ask if some online store has a history of poor service or spamming)
Some of the challenges for the Semantic Web include vastness, vagueness, uncertainty, inconsistency and deceit. Automated reasoning systems will have to deal with all of these issues in order to deliver on the promise of the Semantic Web.
Vastness: The World Wide Web contains at least 48 billion pages as of this writing (August 2, 2009). The SNOMED CT medical terminology ontology contains 370,000 class names, and existing technology has not yet been able to eliminate all semantically duplicated terms. Any automated reasoning system will have to deal with truly huge inputs.
Vagueness: These are imprecise concepts like "young" or "tall". This arises from the vagueness of user queries, of concepts represented by content providers, of matching query terms to provider terms and of trying to combine different knowledge bases with overlapping but subtly different concepts. Fuzzy logic is the most common technique for dealing with vagueness.
Uncertainty: These are precise concepts with uncertain values. For example, a patient might present a set of symptoms which correspond to a number of different distinct diagnoses each with a different probability. Probabilistic reasoning techniques are generally employed to address uncertainty.
Inconsistency: These are logical contradictions which will inevitably arise during the development of large ontologies, and when ontologies from separate sources are combined. Deductive reasoning fails catastrophically when faced with inconsistency, because "anything follows from a contradiction". Defeasible reasoning and paraconsistent reasoning are two techniques which can be employed to deal with inconsistency.
Deceit: This is when the producer of the information is intentionally misleading the consumer of the information. Cryptography techniques are currently utilized to alleviate this threat.
This list of challenges is illustrative rather than exhaustive, and it focuses on the challenges to the "unifying logic" and "proof" layers of the Semantic Web. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Incubator Group for Uncertainty Reasoning for the World Wide Web (URW3-XG) final report lumps these problems together under the single heading of "uncertainty". Many of the techniques mentioned here will require extensions to the Web Ontology Language (OWL) for example to annotate conditional probabilities. This is an area of active research.
Another feed..... This one from Marketing Tech Blog
Categorizing, filtering, tagging, collecting, querying, indexing, structuring, formatting, highlighting, networking, following, aggregating, liking, tweeting, searching, sharing, bookmarking, digging, stumbling, sorting… it’s downright painful.
In December, I predicted that 2010 would be the year of filtering, personalization and optimization. I’m not sure we’re even close yet – we might be years off. The bottom line is that we need it now, though. The noise is already deafening.
If you don’t see the video, watch Web 3.0 on the blog.
Google is still just a search engine, only providing you dumb data indexed on keywords that match your queries. I’d really like someone to build a find engine next… I’m tired of searching, aren’t you?
Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.
Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!
I had the pleasure of speaking at the CMS Expo last week in Chicago. This was the first time I had attended this conference I was not sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised at how great it was.
The CMS Expo is a learning and business conference devoted to Content Management Systems and website services. It features a number of tracks centered around business and technology themes. The five tracks at this year’s conference were Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, Plone, and Business. I’m still working on getting them to feature my favorite CMS next time. The first four tracks were specifically focused on the respective CMS featured while the business track covered marketing, research, best practices, social media, and other business-specific topics.
I gave two presentations for the business track: “7 Habits of Highly Effective Websites” and “Twitter for Business“. Both went very well and got great feedback. It was a great crowd and I had lots of excellent questions and discussion.
Here is what I liked about the CMS Expo:
Everyone was extremely friendly and outgoing
The speakers were great
The conference website was very useful and well done
The organizers really put on a great event with lots of networking
It is expensive, which means higher-quality businesses in attendance (yes, I liked this)
The only thing I didn’t like so much was the fact that everything tended to run late so I had to cut both of my sessions a little shorter but this was a fairly minor issue.
I attended some great sessions on Google Analytics and market research and had a great time meeting new people. Those who are more interested in technical tracks, especially related to one of the feature open-source CMSs, would find the material very valuable. I poked my head into a few of these sessions and also noticed lots of positive Twitter chatter about these tracks. Many of the speakers at the CMS Expo were original founders and developers of some of the CMSs represented.
The attendance at the 2010 CMS Expo was around 400 and and it also included a full group of great exhibitors who did a fantastic job of marketing themselves and contributing to the environment. They were even giving away iPads! I was also interested to see so many speakers and attendees from far away places, including France, and Norway.
The climate of the conference was definitely one of fun, learning, and helping others and it was a pleasure to be a part of it. John and Linda Coonen (CMS Expo founders) did a wonderful job and I look forward to next year’s event.
If you work in marketing and/or technology, consider attending next year’s CMS Expo. It will be well worth your time.
Michael is President & CEO of SpinWeb. SpinWeb creates professional websites for businesses and nonprofits. Michael conducts regular educational workshops and seminars and is available for speaking engagements on the topics of Internet marketing, technology, social media, business development, extreme productivity, and networking.
Everyday I assist companies who have no idea how they determined their sponsorship budget, nor how they actually measure the impact of those expenditures on the bottom line. It’s not uncommon. Most marketing departments simply have a line item, called “Sponsorships”. When a regional or industry colleague calls and asks if they’d like to sponsor an event – it’s usually just a matter of whether the audience is relevant and if there’s budget left.
You’re losing money on your sponsorship investment. And you’re letting those companies who are coordinating these events off the hook. Your company can get better exposure, better results, spend less money… and target the exact prospects you’re seeking.
Here are 10 questions to help you evaluate your next sponsorship opportunity:
What are the outcomes of the sponsorship that are going to matter to your organization? Don’t be fooled by stats and things that are easy to measure.
What are the benchmarks of previous sponsorships opportunities that you’ve acquired? What are your goals with respect to them? Be sure they’re as specific as possible (“200 leads from women aged 30-55?).
What is the return on each of those goals that are reached? How do they compare with your organization’s priorities?
Do those objectives align with core drivers of your business.
What metrics do you apply to other marketing mediums that can be applied to your sponsorship? (ie. close ratios, lead time, etc.)
What are the emotional and behavioral states of the prospects you’ll be reaching? It’s not enough to understand their demographics – you need to ensure the intent is there as well.
Utilizing primary research, are organizations going to be present that will drive business to you through their audience? Or are you just getting banner space on a website?
How much money are you saving through your sponsorship? If you’re acquiring customers through sponsorships, you can save money by reducing sales travel and entertainment expenses that are typically associated with nurturing leads.
How much of your customer base would be impacted by your sponsorship? How much of the sponsorship’s target would be interested in your products and services? If it’s 20%, you’re on the right track.
How are you going to capture data? Capture data and then use the data to engage in meaningful conversations with your audience post-sponsorship.
If you’re a company who offers sponsorships, can you help answer these questions? By ensuring that your sponsors get a positive return on their sponsorship investment not only can you sleep easier – you can better evaluate the value of your sponsorship opportunities. Many companies underestimate their sponsorship by focusing on how many sponsor dollars they need rather than evaluating the value of their audience on sponsors!
This list was inspired by IEG’s 10 Factors Critical to Sponsorship.
Julie is the founder and CEO of Smart Sponsorship, a marketing firm specializing in assisting businesses to maximize their return on investment on sponsorship expenditures. Smart Sponsorship also assists companies build and price comprehensive sponsorship solutions to maximize revenue and impact for their customers.
Dating, in general, kind of sucks. Or at least that’s always been my impression. Unfortunately, unless you want to die alone in your gorgeous Troy, NY apartment under a mountain of cats who do nothing but leach off you and prevent you from sleeping a solid eight hours, at some point you have to get in the game. And that means going on the elusive first date. The first date is when you get to know someone. It’s when you get to observe their behavioral cues to determine whether you’d be a good match. It’s when you watch how he butters his bread and wonder if he’d be gentler with a baby. [Don’t tell me you’ve never done that, ladies.]
As wacky as it may sound, people are judging the homepage of your Web site in the very same manner that they’re judging their date. And they’re asking themselves the very same set of questions.
Questions like:
Are we on the same page?
During a romantic encounter, you want to make sure you both have the same goals, want the same things, and that you’re not looking for a first kiss while he’s trying to get you back to his place with as little effort as possible. And when you’re a searcher, it’s the exact same scenario, minus the creepy porn music, of course.
Someone conducted a search and was woo’d back to your place by a compelling Title tag and Meta Description. In a perfect world, you’d direct them to a properly optimized landing page, but if you’re not, then you need still need to make sure your homepage ‘matches’ their search. There needs to be some cue that, “yes, you searched for [delicious vanilla cupcakes] and here are all of our delicious vanilla cupcakes”. Because if you create disconnect between what they WANT and SEARCHED FOR with what you’re offering and the language you’re using, they’re gone. In an instant and they’re not leaving a phone number. Your homepage should be designed to address the exact concerns customers are arriving with.
What are you about?
A first date is a reconnaissance mission. You arrive trying to corroborate everything Google told you find out as much as you can about this person, including their profession, what they do for fun, where they grew up, etc. You want to get a feel for what this person is all about to see if you’re a match. And it’s the same process when a customer lands on your site for the first time.
When someone hits your site for the first time, they’re taking everything in and trying to get a feel for who you are. Your homepage needs to lay the groundwork for the entire culture of your business. You want to use not only your words and language to convey a message, but images, social proofing, video, white space, etc. One glance of your page (which is probably all you’re getting) should tell people who you are and what audience your business is looking to attract.
Can I trust you?
While you can’t create trust in one date, that doesn’t mean people aren’t looking for the cues. They’re looking to see how you talk about your friends, whether you’re rude to the waiter and if you’re checking out someone else while they’re telling you a story. And, again, it’s not much different here on the Web.
On the Web, trust rules all and your homepage should be the first step in creating it. It’s really important that you focus on hitting all the important site trust indicators so that customers know it’s safe to enter their credit card information on your site, that you’ll still be around tomorrow, and that you have experience in whatever it is you claim that you do. Investing in a professional Web design and displaying links to security information, About pages, etc, are all great ways to let people know you’re going to treat them well and not rob them of their life savings.
Are you literate?
Part of that ‘trust’ thing means ensuring that if my life was in danger, you’d be able to use the phone book to call the appropriate authorities. On your Web site, I want to know you can spell newsletter before I agree to sign up for yours. It’s the little things.
Do other people like you?
When you’re chatting with someone on a first date, you’re trying to gather up some social proof. Essentially, you want to know that this person has OTHER people in their lives. Like, friends. This, as you may know, is a good sign that the person you are out with is not, in fact, a raging psychopath that their own mother had to move thousands of miles to get away from them.
On the Web, we look for social proof to help us determine whether or not this is a company we want to be associated with. For example, if your homepage shows you actively talking to people on Twitter, displays that you have 8,000 Facebook fans and that you have tons of testimonials from happy customers, I feel a lot safer doing business with you. People are sheep. We like doing business with the same companies the rest of the flock is doing business with. Show me your flock.
Are you gonna make me work for it?
When you’re out with someone, you want to know it’s not going to become a hassle to KEEP going out with them. For example, can the other person hold an intelligent conversation or do shiny objects distract them? Are their cute quirks like loud chewing, rambling, inability to hold their alcohol, etc, going to stop being “cute” and start becoming “annoying” three months down the line?
On the Web version, people are looking at your site and trying to determine how difficult it’s going to be to navigate and get through it. Are they going to have a hard time finding the right product? Is the check out process five more steps than it needs to be? Are things laid out sensibly? If your site looks like it’s going to be high maintenance, customers are going to go find a site that isn’t. We don’t have that much time to wait on BS these days. Yeah, boys, I’m talking to you.
Will you tell me what to do next?
The end of a first date is always a little awkward. Do you shake hands? Hug? Go in for the kiss? And what do you do once you figure that part out? Who’s going to call who? Should I just sit around and wait? Should I just say screw it and get the third cat now? For me, the sign of a successful first date ends with a plan for the next one. Some sort of follow up that lets me know, hey, this worked, next we should do X. Without it, I’m stuck on my couch wondering what just happened and waiting for the ice cream to thaw.
Once I’m on your homepage, you need to give me a road map for how I’m supposed to get off and get on with my life. Yes, I came to you looking for cupcakes and you seem to sell them, but now what? What’s next in the conversion path? A successful homepage will lay the groundwork for the rest of my site interaction. Without it, I’m fumbling in the dark. I don’t like to fumble.
Those are some ways I think homepage and dating interactions tend to mirror one another. Any others you can think of?
Hey, Happy Monday. There’s a lot of really cool stuff happening in our little corner of the Internet lately. If you haven’t seen it, here’s some stuff for you to check out and maybe get involved with. If there are any other surveys, contests or things you think people should be aware of, feel free to drop them in the comments. And yes, self promotion is fine. If it’s cool, share it. If it’s not and you share it, we’ll make fun of you in the comments.
Here are the things I think people should be aware of:
Take the 2010 SEOMoz Industry Survey
Yo, Data Nerds, SEOmoz needs your help. Actually, the industry does. Last week Rand Fishkin blogged at SEOmoz about the 2010 SEO Industry Survey he sent live and he’s looking to get your help answering a few questions. By taking a few minutes out of your day, SEOmoz hopes to learn:
Who are the people in the SEO community?
How do they learn about SEO and sharpen their skills?
How are companies embracing search marketing?
Which tools and tactics do people in the industry use to support their SEO and social media efforts?
If you can, head on over to the survey and help the Mozzers out. It’s painless and SEOmoz promises to share the data they get with the industry. So go make your industry footprint known and take the 2010 survey. There are also prizes if you completely don’t care about the industry and just want a chance at an iPad or some sweet SEOmoz attire. Your 2010 census didn’t come with a possible ninja shirt, did it? No? I didn’t think so. This does.
New Social Marketing Analytics White Paper
While getting involved in social media is great, actually tracking and quantifying what you’re doing is oh-so-much-better. Unfortunately, placing trackable metrics on social media activity is something many businesses continue to struggle with it. In fact, according to a new white paper, most marketers can’t even agree on what social marketing analytics even means. Ouch.
Our friends at Web Analytics Demystified and Altimeter Group put together a new white paper on social marketing analytics to offer some recommendations on how business owners can and should be measuring social media.
The white paper looks at it:
Defining social marketing analytics
Available social marketing analytic vendors
A new social media measurement framework
Proposed social marketing KPIs
…lots more juicy stuff!
I was lucky enough to be one of the folks consulted on the report, so it was exciting to see some of the findings that were released. If you’re doing ANYTHING in social media (and how could you not be today?), I recommend you go download the white paper and check it out. It’ll help you sound smart to your boss.
“What one recommendation would you share with small business owners to improve their online presence?”
Participants can focus their answer on SEO, PPC or Social Media. Or, you can submit three separate entries to hit each one. It’s your call. Either way, this is a nice opportunity for a small business owner to get themselves a pass for the big SES show taking place in August and to attend Bruce Clay’s SEO ToolSet training in either Simi Valley or Long Island. You’ll still have to cover your own airfare (as far as I can tell), but the knowledge you’ll get in each help you recoup that cost. Also, you never know who you’ll meet at SES.
If you want to get in on the action, BCI will be accepting entries starting May 1 (that’s Sunday) and you’ll have until May 31 to get them in. Voting starts in June and winners will be announced in July.
For many years the idea was that Direct Sales would prevail as the most effective method of communication with past, present, and future clients and customers. For those of us who have been involved in the Direct Sales Market, the years have seen many strong changes that some view as the death of this marketing mainstay. Before I get tarred and feathered, please allow me to explain how a structure with as much earning potential as direct sales has been degraded to a near death marketing method. The mismanagement of campaigns, the overbearing approach of the salesman, and the overall view of direct marketers has the field looking like it's on the way out. The MLM and Pyramid scheme mentality has taken a decent profession and once again made it as comical as the cartoon "I work my way through college" door to door guy. The domination of these token groups has splintered the marketing world into one that will likely destroy the Direct Sales method for another generation.
The primary thought of the MLM's is to hire lots and lots of small time individuals that have no possible way of producing well for themselves. I don't say this trying to insult the members who have found themselves on the bottom of a pyramid scheme, it's just that this is the position where the management would rather you stay. This structure keeps one mass moneymaker,perhaps a mid-level supervisory group and a much larger group of bottom feeders to support them. In the MLM structure there is absolutely no desire(contrary to what they preach) to elevate the position of anyone working for them. If you have a lot of guys, working for barely anything, they will continue to do so, and keep you without any competition. It's impossible for your employees to improve their position if you prevent them from doing so. For years the MLM's have tried to propel the image of wanting to increase their employee numbers to support wealth: this is only true if they actually are selling and making wealth at all levels... which doesn't consistently happen.
Marketing Campaigns, whether direct or through other mediums, have always run the risk of having improper management. Direct Sales and Marketing is usually at the top of peoples list for effective communication methods, but is usually used in a way that is counterproductive to bring in new customers. Consider the AT&T UVERSE and the Verizon FIOS system marketing campaigns that are being waged on local levels. In most cases, they employ the exact same parties to sell their platform that their competition is using in parallel markets. While contracts usually prevent the sales group from mixing markets, the same groups are usually leading the charge for apposing companies. Proper management would not include funding the marketing of your competition in companies like 20/20Communications/Companies or Stampede Marketing when both are contracted to lobby against you product in apposing areas. 20/20Communications contracted in Warrenville Illinois to sell the UVERSE while selling the FIOS System in Tampa.
While the marketing and campaign management companies have always had a reputation for blatant solicitation, in recent years they have effectively branded the entire trade as one of scam artist and hustlers. On an individual level, the usage of "Hard Sales" and "Strong Arm Techniques" have become more and more staple as companies have demanded more and more conversion from the sales teams. Large Corporations have gone to such extremes of adding quality control methods to prevent salesmen from cheating the system. AT&T requires its sales force to have a quality control call for every sale... the problem is that it's rigged in such a way that it's easy to walk the purchaser through the Control Measure. The purchaser has no clue what they've agreed to, the salesman ads another $10.00 to his check, and the main company can easily claim that the person was informed of the items they purchased. It's impossible to assume that this doesn't cause problems.
In Savannah and Chicago 20/20 Communications had to move markets because of the massive amounts of buyers remorse AT&T was receiving from their sales techniques. The Corporate home companies have done what they could do to wash their hands of the mess, but the problems are still catching up with them as well. Regardless of their attempts, the scams have continued and have all but been encouraged my senior and mid-level leadership of the marketing groups. Regardless of the quality control methods being invested in by AT&T and others, the scamming has continued and damaged the branding of both the main company and the marketing group that was contracted by them. The problem is, when they are in the field selling the item, it's the Parent Company shirt they're wearing, not the one with their marketing service logo. Ultimately, the short term gains in sales are not worth the long term discrediting that is endured by the Host Company.
I'm writing this today with the realization that AT&T cut ties with 2020 while several other companies utilize them still. Several MLM structured sales groups are still out there killing the long-term structure of businesses across the corporate structure. Their methods make for quick and responsive gains from the consumer, but also ensure the depletion of viable customers. If dealing with a Direct Sales Campaign, one should consider the marketing methods wished to represent the Parent Company. If the methods of and MLM sales group do not match your own, then it would be advised to bypass them for a more professional marketing strategy. The age of social marketing and seo through web development are opening new doors for marketability. If the holders of the Direct Sales marketing methods aren't careful, they will completely transform the marketing world to website and social media marketing.
While this is a pretty steep setback for the short-term, we will return to our previous standing rather quickly. We've run into similar situations with client sites, but never thought we would need to do damage control of our own.
Here are the following steps that must be taken directly after an event like this.
1. Immediate push for Back-links- During the month following a down-time like this one, the need for sites around the web to verify your existence is crucial. The pages that Google attempts and fails to Crawl can be put on the back burners for a period of time. Making a strong push for links and acknowledgment can get a faster crawl to those skipped pages than would likely come otherwise.
2. Add more content. We all know that the best way to get Google's attention is to give it something new to look at. While we feed several different blogs on this site, we also enjoy adding our own content on a regular basis At this moment its pertinent to add more than we normally would. The additional content will signal that the site is not dead and is in fact very much alive and active.
3. In addition to adding the content, we have to make sure that Google is aware of it being added. To drive home this point, we submit sitemaps... Several sitemaps.
From XML to ROR, wee submit every possible format of sitemap available. Some may think this a bit eccentric, but in dire moments like these, it can be the difference between being demoted for weeks or for months. For additional sitemaps in Wordpress, we suggest using the following
Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of 
Dating, in general, kind of sucks. Or at least that’s always been my impression. Unfortunately, unless you want to die alone in your gorgeous Troy, NY apartment under a mountain of cats who do nothing but leach off you and prevent you from sleeping a solid eight hours, at some point you have to get in the game. And that means going on the elusive first date. The first date is when you get to know someone. It’s when you get to observe their behavioral cues to determine whether you’d be a good match. It’s when you watch how he butters his bread and wonder if he’d be gentler with a baby. [Don’t tell me you’ve never done that, ladies.]
While you can’t create trust in one date, that doesn’t mean people aren’t looking for the cues. They’re looking to see how you talk about your friends, whether you’re rude to the waiter and if you’re checking out someone else while they’re telling you a story. And, again, it’s not much different here on the Web.
Hey, Happy Monday. There’s a lot of really cool stuff happening in our little corner of the Internet lately. If you haven’t seen it, here’s some stuff for you to check out and maybe get involved with. If there are any other surveys, contests or things you think people should be aware of, feel free to drop them in the comments. And yes, 
Take the 2010 SEOMoz Industry Survey