OMG - It's so Slooooowwwwww...

I've been waiting, and waiting for Windows Vista to finish downloading all of its updates, but it is taking forever.

I boot my new, super-fast PC as soon as I get home, and about an hour later, I check it to see that the "life-ring" is still turning, just like the "hourglass" used to spin.

So, then I find something else to do while I wait and hope that the PC does not shut down.

If this is an improvement, I don't know...

I'm back - sort of...

Sorry to all of you loyal readers, but a nasty PC virus made it impossible for me to access the web, so I broke down and bought a brand new PC with Windows Vista.

So far, it is extremely slow, but I will write a longer post and fill you in on the details soon...

The first thing I did was to download Firefox, and then I set up my email, and then accessed Google Docs to post this to my blog... More later...

Back to basics...

The question of whether to use www or not is known as a "canonical" issue. I'm not sure of the etymology of the term, but it means that if both versions are available on the web, the search engines will index both versions, resulting in "duplicate content" which means that they see two identical pages.

In the resulting SERP (Search Engine Results Page), the very last thing that the search engines want is to return two or more links to pages that are identical because their users would leave and try a different search engine, so they push down one or both versions of the page to at least page 3 of their SERP.

The answer is to use a 301 (permanent) redirect on one version to send visitors (and search engines) to just a single version of the page. For example, if you want to use www, then the 301 would send any visitor who forgot to type in the www immediately to the www version.

The 301 is a server header code that is available in the htaccess file, so you should contact your hosting company and have them make the change. Google allows you to set the canonical version in the Tools section of their Webmaster Tools interface, but you should decide beforehand which version you want to use and then make certain that you stick with that convention throughout your site, including the sitemap.xml file.

Do not use a 302 (temporary) redirect - it should be a 301 (permanent) redirect.

You should do this before the search engines can see any of this, and once everything is straightened out, you can re-submit your site to Google, Yahoo, and MSN to "kick-start" their robots.

The choice of whether or not to use www is entirely up to you, but your decision will show up in the final SERP. It may be easier for your hosting company to set up the 301 redirect to go to the www version, but the choice is entirely up to you.

So, decide which version you want to use (www or not) and then:
1. Have your hosting provider set up a 301 redirect in the htaccess file to send visitors to one place or another.
2. Fix the sitemap.xml file to match the 301 version (www or not).
3. Add a line at the beginning of the robot.txt file to tell the world where to find that file ( Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml ).
4. Set the canonical preference to match in Google's Webmaster Tools.
5. Re-submit your site to all three major search engines (the smaller ones should eventually find everything).

Also, you can manually edit the sitemap.xml file to include a missing file and let the search engines know which canonical version to use, as in:
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/clients.html</loc> <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>

How much we all take for granted...

I got a call today from a friend who was in a panic about her web site because it was invisible to the search engines, so I took a look. It is a very small site, but it was built around a sub-domain so the pages had not been indexed by any of the search engines because none of the robots were allowed in due to a server header code of 403 on each page. I had to explain robots.txt, sitemap.xml, pagerank, etc. and when I finally got off the phone, it hit me that we all take a lot of things for granted...

Search Marketing 101

OK, so you've gotten a person to visit your site. Now what? If you want them to convert, there are a few fundamentals, that I will call the 3 S's:

Speed: Nobody likes to wait, so is your visitor subjected to a blank page? You may have created the coolest animation on the planet, but if somebody has to wait for it to load...

Security: Is the ordering on a secure server, or can the entire universe see the transaction? Yes, having a secure socket can raise havoc with the search engines, but...

Simplicity: Is the checkout simple, or does it require the help of a rocket scientist to figure it out. If it take too many clicks of a mouse, the customer either has to be really, really determined, or else they simply leave your site and find it someplace else...

Print Ads versus Internet Ads

If you want to see birds, you can take an approach similar to Print Advertising, which is to hope and pray that your target audience finds enough interest in your ad to make the effort to buy your product.

Unfortunately, this is a lot like putting on a blindfold, taking a shotgun, and going out in the backyard and firing in the direction of bird sounds. Oh sure, you are bound to hit a few birds in the process.

However, birds are always searching for food, so a much simpler way is to put out food where they can see it, and you will soon have more birds than you want.

This is the essence of targeted Search Marketing... Put an ad (food) out where a searcher will see it...

Once they come into your site, it must be good enough for them to convert, but that is a thought for another day.

Microsoft and Yahoo in secret talks?

It is only a matter of time before Microsoft takes over Yahoo, despite Yahoo's attempts to raise the price of the offer, so where does that leave search? In the zeal to get money from all of this Internet advertising, I have a prediction:

Microsoft buys out Yahoo, only to discover that they do not gain that much, and actually lose market share in the long run.

Why? Because it is all about helping people find stuff on the Internet, which has nothing to do with making money. After all, Yahoo bought out Overture (who started the PPC game), but they did not "monetize" the SERP enough to make it a winner (sorry, Terry Semel, but you lost and were kicked out as a result).

How have I reached this conclusion? TV advertisers are running scared because this new medium (the Internet) does not translate into the old marketing dogma of showing ads between content in a linear fashion. It is too easy to ignore the ads and look for the "back button" or just close the browser and start over.

And, ask.com is on the biggest losing streak of all time, despite their dropping "Jeeves" and trying to generate a "viral" marketing scheme to oust the leader, but they do nothing to embrace the webmasters around the globe who want their sites to be found (sorry, Barry Diller, but I warned you).

So, once Micro-Hoo has been around for a few years and does not perform as well as Ballmer had hoped, then what?